What do we need to do?
Position | Mobility and Logistics | Freight Transport Climate Giant in Chains – Combined Road/Rail Transport
The most important levers for more attractiveness in rail freight transport Source: BDI
Survey results of a poll among BDI members and companies, February 2020
Expansion of line capacity
85 %
Punctuality management
74 %
Improving links with other modes of transport
70 %
Increasing efficiency through digitization
67 %
Increasing quality through digitization
63 %
Expanding terminal capacities
63 %
Communication with the customer
63 %
Increase of the area accessibility Percent
44 % 0
Create network capacities in line with demand and the future 1
Creating network capacities through expansion and modernization
Shippers and, above all, their customers expect reliability and thus punctuality of arrival from rail freight transport. Punctuality, in turn, depends heavily on network availability and network capacities. The basis for improving punctuality is therefore primarily rapid network expansion. The central limitation for growth and increased performance of CT today lies very much in the limited network capacities, which already make the German rail network a bottleneck for European rail freight traffic and threaten to push the punctuality targets of network operators and rail transport companies further and further away: The congestion of neuralgic corridor sections and nodes, a lack of efficient bypasses, a lack of suitability for 740-meter trains, the expansion of express train paths for time-sensitive goods, and the targeted growth of passenger traffic, which shares the same network with freight
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traffic, requires a massive expansion and consistent modernization of the network with infrastructure and on-board ETCS, digital interlockings and partially automated operation. Since capacities are already exhausted at many points in the network, the measures that should be implemented quickly are those that are most effective in terms of capacity and can be implemented in a way that is particularly easy on capacity. Only by overdue acceleration of the planning and approval procedures will it be possible to reconcile demand and network capacities in the medium and long term.
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Planning and managing construction sites in a market-compatible manner
The greatest challenge that arises in the course of network expansion is to combine increasing construction activity with efficient network operation. For CT, the quality of service in terms of reliability and punctuality must be maintained at a level that is also acceptable to freight forwarding customers. To achieve this, construction sites must be planned in a capacity-saving manner and
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