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easily work in other countries, and the fact that the vital rail corridor from Antwerp to Basel relies on just two tracks. Kunz said there is a need for a single European rail area with full interoperability, more investment in infrastructure, and a reasonable solution to the problem of coping with both passenger and freight rail demand. “All stakeholders need to have input,” he said. MOVING RAIL FORWARD Also appearing on the stage during the supply chain session was Clemens Först, spokesman of the board of Rail Cargo Group, who began by saying that consistently moving 75 per cent of freight by road is not sustainable. “Rail is the only way to combine economic growth and climate goals,” he said. “We are now at a pivotal point – political will is building.” Först spoke about the Railfreight Forward Initiative, instigated in 2018 by a group of rail operators across Europe to provide a common voice. It is aiming to increase the share of freight moving by rail to 30 per cent by 2030 – Austria and Switzerland are already at this level so it is up to the rest of Europe to catch
HCB MONTHLY | DECEMBER 2019
up. One way to do this is to provide a level playing field in terms of cost: trucking puts a hidden cost on society in terms of emissions, congestion and road casualties, which is absent in the rail sector but is not reflected in the comparative price of moving goods by each mode; countries should provide subsidies to railfreight in order to reflect this, he said. Först also echoed Kunz’s comments about interoperability: driving a train across Europe should be as easy as driving a car, he said – but it is not, and often for political reasons. Rastatt threw a spotlight on those issues, as well as on the lack of resilience. A lobby for the railfreight sector in Europe has long been missing, he added; this has been reflected in the lack of investment – “there are no votes in rail,” he said. During the panel discussion following the presentations, Kunz said that things are changing, and a lot of investment is in the pipeline. However, the main corridors remain vulnerable and political considerations continue to block some developments. Rail is also failing to take advantage of digitisation, it was agreed. Rail operators fail
to provide enough information to their customers, and Jacques Vandermeiren said that more visibility would improve asset utilisation. That applies also to infrastructure operators: he added that the Port of Antwerp cannot get decent rail traffic information from Infrabel, the Belgian infrastructure owner. “We don’t have a clue how many trains come in and out of the port,” he said. “This has to change, and as soon as possible.” Kunz agreed: “We get plenty of data from our customers and rail operators but nothing from infrastructure operators.” Rail infrastructure is widely seen as a matter of strategic national importance, so it is perhaps not surprising that infrastructure owners remain largely under state control and are by definition state monopolies, with all the implications that has for inefficiency. However, there seemed to be no appetite for liberalisation or privatisation in the sector. Rather, a coordinated approach at EU level is seen as an urgent need. Summing up the panel discussion, Verstraeten asked: “We are connecting Europe to Shanghai, why not Antwerp to France?” It is
