EU grants to improve rail freight corridors

The European Union will co-finance four projects aimed at preparing the implementation of four Rail Freight Corridors across Europe with a total of €5.7 million from the TEN-T Programme. The projects focus on establishing fully operational rail freight corridors as required by EU Regulation 913/2010, providing optimal rail freight transport and increasing rail transport competitiveness across the EU. The four projects were selected for funding under the 2011 TEN-T Annual Call.

1. The first, which will receive €1.3 million in EU co-financing, will prepare the managerial structures and activities needed to establish Rail Freight Corridor 2, a trans-national rail freight axis starting in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and then, via Belgium, Luxembourg and France, reaching Basel (Switzerland) and Lyon (France).
2. The second project, which will receive just over €1.6 million in EU co-financing, covers the preparatory studies and activities needed for the organisation of Rail Freight Corridor 8. This axis runs from the key ports of Bremerhaven (Germany), Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and Antwerp (Belgium) to Kaunas (Lithuania), crossing northern Europe on an east-west path.
3. The third project, receiving nearly €1.7 million in EU support, concerns the establishment of Rail Freight Corridor 6, which runs along the south of Europe from Almeria and Madrid in Spain to Záhony in Hungary, crossing France, Italy and Slovenia.
4. The final project will receive just over €1 million in EU co-financing to prepare the implementation of Rail Freight Corridor 4, which runs from Lisbon, Sines and Leixões (Portugal) to Algeciras, Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastián and Irun (Spain) and all the way up through Paris and into northern and eastern France. The project will undertake the required analyses for the freight corridor and prepare the implementation plan.

Rail Freight Corridor 6

Establishing the managerial and operational structures of these four rail corridors is of paramount importance as they will have to coordinate and bring together all the relevant stakeholders to ensure an improved rail freight flow along each individual corridor, to enhance the interoperability and to foster cooperation among the Rail Freight Corridors. All four projects are set to be completed by December 2014.

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Fourth railway package proposals

The European Commission announced on 30 January 2013 the fourth comprehensive package of measures to deliver better quality and more choice in railway services in Europe.

1. The Commission wants to cut the administrative costs of rail companies and facilitate the entrance of new operators into the market. Under the new proposals, the European Rail Agency will become a "one stop shop" issuing EU wide vehicle authorisations for placing on the market as well as EU wide safety certificates for operators instead of member state rail safety authorities. 
2. Companies will be able to offer domestic rail passenger services across the EU: either by offering competing commercial services or through bidding for public service rail contracts, which account for a majority (over 90%) of EU rail journeys and will become subject to mandatory tendering.
3. To ensure fair access for all to the railway, independent track ("infrastructure") managers must run networks in an efficient and non-discriminatory manner and coordinate at EU-level to underpin the development of a truly European network.
4. Under the EU regulatory framework, Member States will have the possibility to protect workers by requiring new contractors to take them on when public service contracts are transferred, going beyond the general EU requirements on transfers of undertakings.

Some key figures of the industry.

• The rail industry has a turnover of €73 billion, which corresponds to 65% of that of air (€112 billion), and has 800,000 employees.
• Rail is critical to the effective functioning of the European economy. More than 8 billion passenger journeys are made by rail each year. Rail carries about 10% of all freight traffic across Europe, with estimated revenue of €13 billion.
• The Rotterdam Genoa freight corridor, for example, runs approximately 130,000 trains per year, the equivalent of nearly 4 million trucks per year.

Each year public authorities invest huge sums in the railway sector. In 2009 this amounted to some €46 billion of public subsidies. This kind of public funding is becoming scarcer.

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"River vs. Ship" part 2

Everybody “wants something from the Danube“: freight shipping companies, environmentalists, politicians as well as the economic sector. But the river can’t please everybody. Part one of our two-part article of wieninternational.at looked at the Danube from a historical and political point of view. Part two presents views from shipping companies, environmentalists and businesses have to say about the Danube.

On behalf of  freight shipping companies wieninternational.at quotes Valdet Farizi of Multinaut Donaulogistik, part of Imperial Shipping Group / Imperial Reederei, who is responsible for freighting services in Vienna. Imperial Shipping Group has an annual freight volume of 60 million tons is transported by a fleet of about 200 company-owned and approximately 500 chartered vessels via rivers, lakes and seas. “Practically nothing is done about the Danube as a waterway. Policy-makers could definitely show more commitment”, says Farizi. “Along the entire shipping route to Constanta there are several sections of one to two kilometres in length requiring ships to make a detour, e.g. via the Borcea, a branch of the Danube in Romania (causing a delay of one day) or making it necessary to unload a ship and distribute its cargo over three vessels to facilitate navigation in shallow water." Mr. Farizi mentions Serbian, Hungarian and Romanian places.


Schaufler, a company based in Ybbs, is active in the recycling industry. Schaufler-Metalle ships up to 5,000 tons per month to Turkey. Mr. Weichinger calculated that it would be worthwhile to have a company-owned port and had a 60,000-square-metre cargo port (including the necessary infrastructure) built. “Indeed, a recycling enterprise should operate in the most environmentally friendly way. But the inadequate navigability of the Danube river poses a problem. We have to use trucks frequently, and this also results in additional costs of up to 50,000 euros per month!“

The Korneuburg-based company “Agrar-Speicher“ faces similar difficulties. Its manager Jürgen Heidenreich is annoyed about the fact that contrary to their promises “policy-makers have not made any investments for several decades”. “Uncertainty poses a major problem to us. We know the freight rate for transporting cargo from Vienna to Rotterdam when the water level is normal. But if the journey has to be interrupted or the vessel has to be re-loaded or in the worst case both, the cost calculation becomes uncontrollable.“

On behalf of environmental protection NGOs, wieninternational.at quotes Jurrien Westerhof, energy spokesperson of the environmental organisation Greenpeace, the discussion about deepening the riverbed of the Danube for cargo ships does not go far enough.“The building sector has a very powerful lobby in Brussels. Of course it struggles to get as many contracts for large-scale projects as possible – the deepening of the riverbed of the Danube would practically be an almost ideal project, it involves a lot of construction work and a lot of money.“ Westerhof believes that problems such as those of the companies Schaufler and Agrar-Speicher (see below) are exceptions: “I think that it is wrong to say that cargo transport on the Danube is environmentally friendly because it reduces truck traffic. There is an existing panacea to remove trucks from the road, i.e. the railways.“  Greenpeace is afraid of a domino effect if the Danube was dredged to deepen the riverbed in Austria. This measure would not make sense unless the southern Danube countries participated in the project. And this would pose a tremendous threat to the flora and fauna of the still natural or nearly natural Danube river section from the Lobau to the Black Sea. “Due to the numerous barrages, the deepening of the riverbed is already problematic at this stage. One of the problems is the drying up of wetlands, and to date no solutions have been found.“

Quoting mobility experts, the Development Centre for Ship Technology and Transport Systems for the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development examined whether the navigability of rivers can be improved by developing “river-compatible” inland navigation vessels: “Based on state-of-the-art technology, the innovative measures analysed will lead to higher production and operating costs. To cover the extra investment and operating costs, freight rates would have to be increased to a level that is not competitive even after the introduction of the truck toll (...). New innovative vessels would, however, offer only inadequate competitive advantages. While innovative technical measures could help to use the existing waterway infrastructure more efficiently, they will not make up for inadequate infrastructure.“

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EU Clean Fuel Strategy

According to the European Commission, clean fuel is being held back by three main barriers: the high cost of vehicles, a low level of consumer acceptance, and the lack of recharging and refuelling stations. It is a vicious circle. The Commission is therefore proposing a package of binding targets on Member States for a minimum level of infrastructure for clean fuels such as electricity, hydrogen and natural gas, as well as common EU wide standards for equipment needed. The Esuropean Clean Fuel Strategy has the following proposals:

• Electricity: The leading countries are Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The aim is to put in place a critical mass of charging points so that companies will mass produce the cars at reasonable prices.A common EU wide plug is an essential element for the roll out of this fuel. To end uncertainty in the market, today the Commission has announced the use of the "Type 2" plug as the common standard for the whole of Europe.
• Hydrogen: Germany, Italy and Denmark already have a significant number of hydrogen refueling stations although some of them are not publicly accessible. Common standards are still needed for certain components such as fuel hoses. Under this proposal, existing filling stations will be linked up to form a network with common standards ensuring the mobility of Hydrogen vehicles. This applies to the 14 Member States which currently have a Hydrogen network.
• Biofuels: already have nearly 5% of the market. They work as blended fuels and do not require any specific infrastructure. A key challenge will be to ensure their sustainability.
• LNG: Liquefied natural gas is also used for trucks, but there are only 38 filling stations in the EU. The Commission is proposing that by 2020, refuelling stations are installed every 400 km along the roads of the Trans European Core Network. The Commission is proposing that LNG refuelling stations be installed in all 139 maritime and inland ports on the Trans European Core Network by 2020 and respectively 2025 for waterborne transport.
• CNG: Compressed natural gas is mainly used for cars. One million vehicles currently use this fuel representing 0.5% of the fleet - the industry aims to increase this figure ten-fold by 2020. The Commission proposal will ensure that publicly accessible refuelling points, with common standards, are available Europe-wide with maximum distances of 150 Km by 2020.

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"Ship vs River" by Wien International

Part one of our two-part article on Wien Internatinal.at looks at the Danube from a historical and political point of view. (Part 2 here)

"The Danube has always been among Europe’s main waterways. The river used to be one of the borders of the Roman Empire, facilitating the supply of Roman border posts. Some centuries later, the Danube continued to be of vital economic and political importance – downstream during the Christian crusades or upstream during the campaigns of the Ottoman army. [...] The shipping sector is annoyed over the fact that the river running through this beautiful landscape is by no means fully navigable along its entire length. Rocky fords, sandbanks, steep bends and above all a total of 20 barrages pose obstacles to traffic on the river even along the 2,414-km stretch of the Danube between Kelheim (Germany) and Sulina (Romania), which is navigable by large cargo ships"

The Danube countries pledged their commitment to the “effective waterway infrastructure maintenance on the Danube and its navigable tributaries” in the Luxembourg Declaration of 7 June 2012. The political and historical background is the so-called Belgrade Convention of 1948, which stipulates that “the Danube riparian states undertake to maintain their sections of the Danube in a navigable condition for river-going and, on the appropriate sections, for sea-going vessels, to carry out the works necessary for the maintenance and improvement of navigation conditions and not to obstruct or hinder navigation on the navigable channels of the Danube“ (Art. 3). Future-oriented initiatives are being developed under the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (in the framework of the Europe 2020 Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth) and the “Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area” that Austria has signed up for by federal minister Doris Bures in June 2012.

In response to questions on the Danube waterway by wieninternational.at, Christian Salzmann, the spokesperson of the regional government of Lower Austria, provides his comments by using a very “future-oriented terminology”... Regarding content, the statement of the regional government of Lower Austria may be interpreted as follows:

– A well-functioning infrastructure is considered a prerequisite for boosting cargo capacity and demand; therefore all the “countries along the Danube must do what needs to be done.“
– The Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology as well as via donau (Austria’s waterway management and development company) have launched the “Integrated River Engineering Project for the Danube east of Vienna” to redress ecological problems as well as to improve navigation conditions near the Danube Flood Plains National Park. This project is a pilot phase, as remarked above.
– The ecoplus Logistics Cluster was established to serve as an information hub and project platform for Lower Austrian companies.
– High & Heavy. The Ennshafen port in Lower Austria (H2E) is a relevant project; its aim is to develop a comprehensive concept for a heavy cargo port on the Danube river.

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