European Combined Road-Rail Transport - an Analysis of Growth Potential and Management Issues

EUROPEAN COMBINED ROAD-RAIL TRANSPORT - AN ANALYSIS OF GROWTH POTENTIAL AND MANAGEMENT ISSUES

L. Sj&stedt

Lars E. Sjâstedt Department of Transportation and Logistics Chalmers University of Technology S-412 96 Gothenburg Sweden

1. INTRODUCTION

For environmental reasons the political interest in combined road and rail transport has increased rapidly. From a technical point of view, however, combined transport is not a recent innovation. There are many examples from the stage coach era of attempts to combine passenger transport by horse with the emerging rail technology. Already in 1830 the first system was inaugurated involving the transfer of a postal stage coach from a road carriage to its rail counterpart by means of a stationary crane (1). An example of combined transport between rail, road and sea from the early parts of this century is the movement of personal belongings to and from French colonies by the French company CNC1 ), using standardized containers, which were handled by cranes. During the post second world war period many systems have emerged. They can be assigned to one of three main groups; those that have grown out the practice to transport entire trucks and truck combinations in rail tunnels through the Alps, those created primarily to forward the standardized maritime containers to and from ports for transocean shipping and systems which were established to transport carriers designed for road haulage, such as semi-trailers and swap bodies, part of their way on rail. This paper attempts to analyze differences between markets, organiza- tional solutions and traffic development for these systems. One conclusion is that in order to reach maximum penetration there is a need for increased decentralization and specialization of marketing efforts, while production must increase in efficiency and be organized in such a way that the obvious large-scale advantages are taken care of. This demands a hierarchical production organization.

2. POLITICAL INTEREST IN COMBINED TRANSPORT

Politicians in all European countries have for energy conservation and environmental reasons long hoped for and tried to create conditions, that would allow railways to win back a large part of the transport flows, which during the last decades have been lost to the highway. Lately there is a

') A brief account of the early history of CNC, at that time inter- preted Compagnie Nouvelle des Cadres, was given to the author during a visit to the company in 1974.

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growing understanding that this political goal is based on a misconception: Railways have only to a minor degree lost commodities to trucking companies. What has happened is that new markets for high technology or specialized products have emerged, and that these markets have developed in close synergy with the growth of the trucking business. The products concerned are shipped in small quantities over large distances under strict time control, which badly matches classical part-load and wagon-load rail ' transport. The competition surfaces between pure road and rail transport are, in effect, rather small, although where these surfaces exist the competition is fierce2 >. Because of these insights politicians are increasingly tying their expectations to various forms of combined transport. Their main thought is to relieve the large thoroughfares in the highway net from long distance and heavy transports, and yet efficiently connect those numerous number of small and intermediate size transport customers, who cannot themselves at reasonable costs be served directly by the railway network. It comes without saying that there is a minimum distance under which combined transports cannot be motivated, irrespective of what arguments are used. Different sources have from time to time advocated as a rule of thumb a lower limit in the order of 300 to 500 km. In practice it is of course impossible to establish an unequivocal limit, as the prerequisites in indi- vidual cases vary strongly due to a great many factors. A special case are those combined transports that require only one transition between rail car and truck, i.e. to and from ports or where either consignor or consignee has a railway terminal. Here combined transport can compete at shorter distances. Clearly combined transport has its largest potential at long distances. In many cases the transport distances within the domestic markets of the European countries are too small to give combined transport a reasonable expansion potential. Except for the domestic markets in a limited number of large countries, it is thus the international transports that attract interest. This is accentuated by the EEC-92 reform, which is expected to strongly stimulate trade between the European countries. The trend towards longer transport distances is confirmed by the following data from the West German company Kombiverkehr3 >:

Year: 1970 1975 1980 1986

Average transport distance - in km: 450 478 543 639 - in relative terms: 1.00 1.06 1.20 1.42

2) These arguments are well supported by data, at least for Swedish international transport as discussed in detail in (2).

3) Source: Kombiverkehr KG, Frankfurt

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3. INTERVIEWS WITH OPERATORS OF COMBINED TRANSPORT

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the expansion potential for European international combined transport by rail and road trying to identify such problems and barriers that - if unresolved - will retard and delay a politically desirable development. The background material was collected in the fall of 1987 during visits to a number of companies and organizations, which either themselves operate some form of combined transport or have made detailed studies of such transports. These are Okombi in Austria, Intercontainer in Switzerland, CNC and Novatrans in France, Transfracht, Kombiverkehr and Studiengesellschaft fair den kombinierten Verkehr in the FRG, Scanlink in Denmark and finally S- kombi in Sweden. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with senior managers using a guide containing 27 questions under the headings; general structure, network, marketing, production technology, production planning and control and general questions.

4. CLASSIFICATION OF COMBINED TRANSPORT

The concept of combined road and rail transport can be given a more or less narrow definition. In figure 1 it is shown how some of the most common interpretations relate to each other. It is possible to distinguish between five main types of carriers in combined traffic. Combined transport in its narrow sense includes transport of complete highway vehicle combinations, semi-trailers and swap bodies. Combined transport in its extended sense also includes transport of standardized containers, as well maritime containers which fully comply with the ISO standard and containers that are only intended for transport within Europe and only partly agree with the

ACCOMPANIED NON-ACCOMPANIED TRANSPORT TRANSPORT

COMBINED TRANSPORT IN THE NARROW SENSE CONTAINER TRANSPORT

HIGHWAY VEHICLE SEMI-TRAILERS SWAP BODIES INLAND MARITIME COMBINATIONS CONTAINERS CONTAINERS

ROAD HAULAGE BASED MARKETING RAILWAY BASED SHIPPING MARKETING BASED MARKETING

I COMBINED TRANSPORT COMPANY I I CONTAINER TRANSPORT COMPANY

Figure 1 Schematic classification of various forms of combined transport.

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ISO standard. As there is yet neither an established standard for the latter type of container nor for swap bodies, the distinction between these two forms of carriers is somewhat vague. In figure 1 is also indicated the traffic mode that for historical reasons normally bears responsibility for marketing the transport. There are usually widely different conditions for a combined transport depending on whether this is a result of selling activities by a trucking company, a •railway or a shipowner. Each mode has its traditions and entrepreneurial culture and its representatives naturally compete for the direct contacts with the customer and thus the final responsibility for and largest profit chances from the transport. This is an important background factor which will be discussed later. It is also possible to classify combined transport in two groups depending on whether someone is accompanying the transport from end to end or not. In "accompanied traffic"4) the driver normally - after driving his highway vehicle combination on board the train himself - travels with the train in a separate sitting- or sleeping-car. This is a form of transport supply which is expanding in the countries around the Alps. It has its roots in the time period, when the Alp passes constituted a difficult or even impossible barrier to highway traffic during the winter, and railway tunnels therefore were seen as a more comfortable alternative. From the sixties and onwards this form of transport has enjoyed strong political support in the countries concerned. The payload is typically a comparative- ly small part of the gross weight of a train, which has frequently given rise to questions about energy efficiency and profitability. There are often accuses being made that this form of transport is subsidized, and that it distorts competition not only between rail and road but also between the various forms of combined transport among themselves. The limited railway loading gauge necessitates use of very low platform cars with specially built running gear, which makes them expensive. On the other hand the need for terminal investments is limited. It is beyond the scope of this work to try to verify or reject these accuses. To some degree any standpoint will always have to contain an element of political evaluation.

5. RAIL TUNNELS AND ROLLING HIGHWAYS

The future of the "rolling highway"' does not only depend on direct political decisions, but also on the changes that the European infrastructure will be subjected to in coming years. The Channel Tunnel will bring with an extensive ferrying of highway vehicles on board trains between terminals on the French and British side. As it will in any case be necessary for a highway vehicle operator to subject his vehicle to two terminal operations it should in many cases be attractive for him to keep the vehicle on the train also outside the tunnel section. Thus there may be a

4) This is a direct translation from the German expression: "Beglei- tete Verkehr".

°> This is another translation from German which uses the expression: "Rollende Landstrasse".

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potential for secondary terminals, especially on the Continental side where the present loading gauge is less of an obstacle.

The environmental problems in Central Europe will increase the pressure on politicians to build one or two new railway connections through the Alps. These would restore the advantage which the railways have lost as a result of recent extensive motorway constructions in mountainous regions. •As a result of tensions about transit traffic through Austria becoming acute in the summer of 1987, a meeting was organized between the Ministers of Transport of the FRG, Switzerland and Austria, where it was decided to give the question of creating new connections high priority, and an agree- ment was reached about the routes to be studied. If these projects will be realized, there will most certainly be a diffusion effect which will further promote the rolling highway. As known the question about a permanent connection across The Great Belt in Denmark has recently been settled. The connection is planned as a combined rail and road connection but the rail part will be constructed first. This will speed up decision process about possible permanent connections also along the route from the FRG over Denmark to Sweden, known as the migratory bird route. Should the presently not very likely decision be taken to build a pure rail connection along this route, a market for the rolling highway type of combined transport would likely arise also in the Nordic countries. With the rather spacious loading gauge dimensions of the railway systems involved there would also be a potential to develop rolling stock for high utilization and with an improved relation between payload and gross weight compared to existing systems. In those countries, where the rolling highway is well established traffic increases rapidly. Numbers for the total traffic are shown in table 1 for the countries concerned, i.e. Italy, Switzerland, the FRG and Aust- ria. All the increase is in international traffic. In Austria, which has international traffic only, the increase between 1985 and 1986 was no less than 155 %. Clearly other factors than topography are present. Austria and Switzerland only permit a total weight of a highway vehicle combination of 28 tons, while the FRG and Yugoslavia permit 40 tons and Italy 44 tons. If these rules are strictly enforced, hauliers will sometimes have to choose between smaller loads or using the railway for part of the distance. Also, the very long-haul truck transports are increasing rapidly. In this case it is often attractive to use rail for part of the distance to allow the driver to rest without halting the transport.

6. INTERCONTAINER - THE ONLY PAN-EUROPEAN COMPANY

A pushing force of a quite different character than the wish to cross natural barriers arose when transocean shipping was rapidly containerized in the sixties. Intercontainer was formed in 1967 by the European railways as a commercially oriented company specialized in organizing transport of maritime containers across national borders in Europe to and from the trans-ocean ports. The company has its seat in Brussels and its main office in Basle in Switzerland. it is represented in 25 Eastern and Western European countries either directly by the railway or by a daughter company of the railway. Gradually the intra-continental traffic has become an important complement, which still grows faster than the maritime traffic.

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Table 1 Statistics of the number of shipments in international and national traffic from the member companies of UIRR. Note that one swap body shipment most often consists of two bodies and that a truck and trailer combination in rolling highway traffic counts as one shipment. The Swedish company S-kombi joined the UIRR in 1986. Numbers within brackets refer to S-kombi numbers being excluded.

1985 1986 Increase, %

Semi-trailer shipments: - international 86,961 80,201 (77.501) -7.8 (-10.9) - national 106,644 147,968 (103,968) 41.4 (-.6) - total 191,605 228,169 (181,469) 19.1 (-5.3)

Swap body shipments: - international 100,823 132,895 31.8 - national 348,977 376,555 (364,555) 7.9 (4.5) - total 449,800 509,450 (497,450) 13.2 (10.6)

Rolling highway shipments: - international 34,678 52,800 52.3 - national 42,348 42,366 0.0 - total 77,026 95,166 23.6

Other shipments: - national 4,795 3,158 -34.1

Total number of shipments: - international 223,163 265,896 (263,196) 19.1 (17.9) - national 500,646 569,631 (514,047) 13.8 (2.7) - grand total 723,809 835,527 (777,243) 15.4 (7.4)

In 1986 387,912 loaded TEU were forwarded in the maritime traffic and 227,100 TEU in the intra-continental traffic. This is an increase by 1.3 % and 5.7 %, respectively, in comparison with 1985. In addition to these market sectors Intercontainer in 1986 had direct traffic with Great Britain and Ireland as well as traffic to or through Russia which together amounted to 6.2 % of the total volume in TEU. In the continental traffic inland containers6 > or swap bodies are prefered, since due to their somewhat larger width these are better adapted to the standard EUR pallet than the maritime container. Swap bodies account for a rapidly increasing part of the continental traffic. In 1986 swap bodies equivalent to 105,000 TEU were transported, which is an increase with 30 % above the number for 1985. The pool traffic even doubled to 20,500 TEU. By pool traffic is meant transports involving swap bodies, that

6) Inland containers are called Eurocontainers according to Intercon- tainer terminology.

58 L.E. Sjoestedt belong to the pool which Intercontainer has at its disposal. These swap bodies are rented by the customer. In some countries pure container transport companies have been formed, which in addition to being representatives of Intercontainer have an extensive container traffic of their own. The biggest are Freightliner in Great Britain7 ) and Transfracht in the FRG, which only transport containers, and CNC in France, which also transports swap bodies. Figure 2 shows a forecast of the traffic development for Transfracht measured in thousands of containers. It is noteworthy that because of the need for positioning a great many maritime containers are transported empty, although the share of empty in relation to the total number of maritime containers is expected to

Figure 2 Forecast of the traffic development of Transfracht until 1992, measured in thousands of containers. The column from front to back represent total number of inland containers, number of loaded maritime containers and number of empty maritime containers.

') According to (5) Freightliner has in October 1988 merged with the British Railways wagon-load traffic, previously called Speedlink. The new organization is called Railfreight Distribution.

59 L.E. Sjoestedt drop from 52.1 % in 1986 to 48.8 % in 1992. The Intercontainer share of the total traffic of Transfracht rose from 20.5 % to 29.8 % between 1985 and 1986.

7. INTERNATIONALIZATION OF SEMI-TRAILER AND SWAP BODY TRAFFIC

According to figure 1 non-accompanied transport in a narrow sense consists of semi-trailer and swap body transports. Combined transport of semi-trailers has long traditions in Europe. France has already passed through four technology generations. The first system was called UFR and was introduced in 1941. Both the semi-trailers and the railway cars were specially built. The car was loaded by driving the semi-trailer on board the car from its short end. Next generation, which was rather short-lived, was based on a Swedish patent. The semi-trailer bogie was loose and did not accompany the railway car. When loading the semi-trailer it was backed at a steep angle towards the car, thereby sliding up onto a turntable at one end of the car. It could the be swung into position on the care). Next system, was an upgraded and modernized form of the UFR and was called Kangarou. Nowadays France has entirely adopted the same system as in most other countries, which means that the semi-trailer is lifted into its position on the rail car by means of a gantry crane or truck. In spite of an early technology development traffic growth in most European countries has been rather slow. In Sweden the company ASG, which is partly owned by the State Railways, introduced "line 1", as it was called, already in 1968 between Stockholm and Gothenburg, but after that nothing happened for many years. The reasons are believed to be organiza- tional. The truckers were hesitant to leave their semi-trailer to the railways because of fear for delays and damages, and the railways themselves were moderately interested, since they were anxious to maintain contact with the final customer themselves. The truckers on the other hand, have not always had the competence or strength to organize the highway transport at both ends of the rail transport. Only when - partly under influence from political pressure - special companies for combined transport with strong ownership involvement by the truckers had been formed in several countries, did a more rapid growth occur. In 1970 the national companies for combined transport formed the UIRR9 > as an association for promotion of international traffic. In spite of this the growth of international traffic remained slow. The reason is- as already mentioned that the true long-haul highway freight transportation is a rather recent phenomenon in Europe. Also here trucking companies or forwarding agencies with resources to organize terminal transports at both ends have been lacking. Technical obstacles of various kinds have also been present. Therefore the proper international combined traffic is still basically bilateral. The situation is, however, rapidly changing. In 1987 a decision was made about trial lines between Malmô in Sweden and Verona in

e> A similar system has more recently been developed and put into operation in Finland.

'> UIRR is in French read: "Union Internationale des Sociétés de Transports Combinés Rail-Route".

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Italy over Trelleborg, Sassnitz and Vienna as well as between Malmô and Basle. In 1988 a Nordic cooperation was initiated with the purpose of operating a joint traffic towards the Ruhr area in the FRG. In order to further strengthen the international cooperation INTERUNIT was set up in 1986 as an association between the UIRR companies and their equivalent European railways. Figure 3 shows the international traffic development for the UIRR companies. These belong to the following countries:

Kombiverkehr Federal Republic of Germany Novatrans France Hupac Switzerland Okombi Austria T.R.W. Belgium Cemat Italy Transnova Spain Trailstar The Netherlands

S-kombi in Sweden was formed in 1985 but had not yet any international UIRR traffic in 1986. 2,700 units in traffic with Norway did not count as UIRR traffic, as Norway lacks a member organization in the UIRR.

Figure 3 A graphic picture of the international traffic development for the member companies of UIRR.

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In table 1 statistics for all semi-trailer and swap body transports are assembled. The high number for national swap body transport is totally dominated by Kombiverkehr with 232,930 and 234,510 for the two years 1985 and 1986, respectively. The swap body is the most recently introduced and flexible type of carrier. When a common European standard for swap bodies has been approved, as is anticipated to occur within the next couple of years, a rapid build- •up of swap body pools is to be expected accompanied by a rapidly expanding traffic.

8. POLITICAL GOALS AND COMMERCIAL REALITIES

The results from the interviews will be published in detail elsewhere. Some of the conclusions are summarized below. The strong political interest in combined transport is rooted in the environmental qualities of these transports and the belief that they have the potential to rid the motorway network from a large part of the heavy truck traffic and smooth out passenger car traffic. This political dimen- sion has, however, little impact on the daily commercial realities of combined transport. The companies seldom use these qualities as an argument in their marketing efforts. As in any other transport context the variables price, transport time and transport frequency are the factors with the heaviest influence. In addition there are requests for high standards regarding reliability and low risk of goods damage. The risk of damage seems to be modest and is generally used as an argument in favor of combined transport. The reason is likely that combined transport in Continental Europe to a large an increasing extent makes use of block trains or full trains, which never pass shunting yards. To the extent certain cars are shunted, this is made in modern shunting yards, where the impact speed is controlled within narrow limits by shunting brakes. Reliability measured as the ability to follow planned time-tables is extremely important for combined traffic. In practice it varies rather much from one country to the next in Europe. In the FRG and in France trains have a very good punctuality. Accordingly there are no complaints from the combined transport operators in these countries. On the contrary, the punctuality is here used as an important argument in the marketing efforts. One example is the express train for fruits and vegetables which is used by CNC to connect the city of Marseille with the markets in the Paris region. Another example which is also heavily marketed by CNC is the Tango Express, which with speeds up to 160 km/h provides an overnight service between Marseille and Lille and is currently the fastest goods train in regular service in the world. The situation is less satisfactory in some other countries, such as Sweden where especially during the winter season the punctuality of trains is not judged to be fully up to the standards which the customers expect. The companies are well aware of the need for professional management functions and the necessity of being able to offer customers long term and stable contractual relations. It is important to be able to build the confidence among customers which is a necessary prerequisite for these to endeavour making combined transport a cornerstone in the investment heavy and complex logistical transport arrangements, which will emerge as a consequence of the EEC-92 reform. The question to what extent the companies

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really are capable of living up to the expectations from their customers cannot be satisfactorily answered as no interviews were made with customers The big threat against combined transport is generally believed to be that EEC-92 will lead to fierce competition among trucking companies and therefore cause a strong price pressure on highway transportation in general. This will indirectly hurt the possibilities of combined transport ' operators to make a profit. The West German domestic market has been protected After the EEC-92 reform it will become pressurized from two sides. In The Netherlands a rich logistic competence has developed as a consequence of the very large flows of goods which pass through the port of Rotterdam. There are many companies who hope to rape the fruits of a free Europe by exploiting this competence. In Greece, where as a result of vast shipping activities there also exists the know-how needed to compete suc- cessfully, the trucking business are preparing for rapidly expanding commitments in Central Europe. These will be facilitated by the fact, that by using funding from the World Bank Yugoslavia is at a quick pace extending its network of motorways, and thus in a few years will be able to offer a continuous motorway connection between Greece and FRG. As in Austria the investments are primarily motivated by the need to cater for an expanding tourism, which in both countries is of significant national economic importance. A factual consequence will, however, be that yet another barrier against highway traffic will be torn down, which will not only stimulate automobile traffic but also create tangible improvements for road-based goods transportation in Central Europe.

9. A MATURE LINE OF BUSINESS WITH MANIFEST TECHNOLOGY NEEDS

It may be seen as if combined transport in the applications studied in this paper is a new field of technology. It is for sure highly visible and attracts the interest of numerous innovators. A warning should, however, be issued. Combined transport is in the process of becoming a mature line of business with a rather well defined structure and use of technology. With some exceptions, which will be dealt with below, the systems in Europe, USA and elsewhere seem to converge towards essentially the same terminal handling technology, which to a large extent will govern system design elsewhere. A very ambitious attempt has been carried out in the FRG in order to identify and develop radically new technologies. As research it has been very well documented; see (6) and (7), but none of the innovative concepts being evaluated was found to offer the desired economic potential. Besides carrying out a full scale experiment to test one of new handling concepts, no attempts to commercialize the results have been made. The mature system for combined transport is an interconnected, heavy, large-scale system. It converges towards a relatively small number of terminals with a high turn-over of carriers. Too much capital has already gone into this interconnected system to allow a major deviation from this general trend, except maybe in a very long time perspective. In the short run the railways have only one option; while making use of this established technology they must create a high class, high capacity, coarse-meshed net of terminals, tied together with full trains operated according to very stiff timetables. The ability to create during the next decade such a spine

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characterized by high service levels and moderate prices will be decisive for the future of European combined transport at large. Some railway administrations are moving fast in this direction. In 1988 the German Federal Railways (DB) made a strong concentration of their combined transport operations to a core network of 14 reloading terminals and the ports Hamburg, Bremen and Bremerhaven. These 17 terminals were connected by means of 64 direct trains with several departures per night from each terminal. In parallel to the emergence of such core networks the picture of the market niches for supplementary systems that may develop at the side of the core nets will become clearer. Some systems of interest are: ■ The rolling highway has already been treated. Its base will continue to be physical barriers, which offer a competition advantage to the railway, in practice bridges and tunnels under water or through moun- tains. If there is a parallel motorway it is more difficult to motivate placing the whole highway vehicle combination on a train set, unless high environment fees are introduced for the highway vehicle combination, the railway transport is subsidized or the free choice is re- stricted by means of regulations. ■ The Roadrailer concept, which originated in the US, and where the latest generation is characterized by fitting temporarily a rail wheel- set to a semi-trailer, which is then hung on the semi-trailer in front instead of being lifted on board a separate rail vehicle, has two interesting characteristics. The tare weight during rail transport is kept low and the fixed costs for a terminal are drastically reduced. These characteristics create possibilities to set up a supplementary, fine-meshed, low capacity net in sparsely populated areas, where it is impossible to economically motivate a terminal belonging to the core net. Possible applications are in fringe areas of Europe, such as a cross connection in Northern Scandinavia between Finland, Sweden and Norway, in Scotland, Western France, Southern Italy etc. Concepts similar to Roadrailer are presently being tested in several locations in Europe, e.g. in England (Trailer train - Tiger Rail) and in France. ■ The Swedish C-sam system (8), where a small swap body is placed longi- tudinally on a small truck or laterally on a rail car, which in Sweden results in the measures 2.6 m x 3.4 m, is interesting for similar reasons. The terminals can be small and simple, since the truck driver can handle loading and unloading of the swap body onto and from the rail car alone. The small scale character of the system is underlined by the fact that the carrier with its approximately 20 m3 is conside- rably smaller than the carriers used in the core net. In Great Britain the loading gauge does not permit transport of semi-trailers by rail by conventional means. The terminals in the core net are only fitted with equipment for top lift and cannot handle swap bodies. Railfreight Distribution is therefore currently experimenting with several technologies for handling swap bodies and semi-trailers. The C-sam technology has been tested under the name Minilink between London and Glasgow and plans for extending this traffic exist.

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10. HIERARCHICAL PRODUCTION ORGANIZATION AND DECENTRALIZED MARKETING

Railway operation is and will remain an activity with obvious large- scale advantages. Contrary to this, the demand for goods transport changes in the direction of many small shipments, which are repeated at regular intervals. To match this demand pattern, the systems for combined transport must be given a hierarchical production structure. This means that railway administrations will have to get used to that fact, that there future customers will often not be the owner of the goods but other transport companies, which maintain there specialized role of consolidating or splitting rail shipments. In many cases there will be room for three levels before the final customer is reached. Considering the fact that professional companies are often engaged to handle packaging work, it is even possible to discern four levels. In such a structure marketing will neces- sarily have to be decentralized. There is therefore room for many specialized combined transport companies, and all of these rely on the same core network at the top of the hierarchy. Of course anyone can own and operate such a company. The railway administrations have the choice to retain their responsibility for marketing rail transports and operating trains only. But they can also extend their activities vertically - with or without partners - by organizing specialized companies for specific tasks.

11. EEC POLICY AND THE FUTURE

At present there is no coherent European rail policy (3). In 1984 the EEC Commission proposed to the Council of Ministers (Doc. COM (83) 764) a set of actions aiming at giving the railways greater freedom to act commercially, while the countries were to assume full responsibility for the infrastructure. The EEC Council of Ministers accepted these principles and so did the EEC Parliamentary Assembly through its report on railway policy, but the Ministers of Finance of the different countries opposed the propo- sal, since it would entail a heavier burden on their national budgets. From the interviews it became clear that the biggest problem for the combined transport operators is the great uncertainties about the price that they will be charged from their mother railway administrations in the years ahead. This uncertainty is to some extent spread to their customers and creates hesitations about the viability of long term investments and contracts. According to the opinion of the author of this paper it is extremely important that the European nations agree upon a joint rail policy. The railways of Europe must be managed as a single system from a traffic control point of view and there must be clear rules which gives anyone who endeavors to set up an efficient operation of rail services on commercial grounds a chance to forecast within reasonable limits of accura- cy what his or her future cost structure will look like. This can only be achieved if the border-line between responsibility for the infrastructure and responsibility for operation of rail transport services is clearly defined. Lack of political will or courage to tackle this issue will only produce the unavoidable result that the huge capital which has been spent on railways will be less efficiently used and that more investment money will be spent on loose grounds. Whenever the important step of a complete separation of economic responsibilities for infrastructure and operation of transport services has

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been taken it will be possible to discuss the next step. None would se- riously question the reason to allow several airlines to serve the same route between two major European centers. Nor would it be sensible to demand to shift responsibility for a service from one company to the other while passing over the borderline between two countries. What is self- evident for physical reasons in shipping or air transport must be realized also for rail transport; a company engaged in providing rail transport •service along an important artery in a United Europe must be given the possibility to take full responsibility for customer service at both ends of the artery. Since there is not likely any motive to merge all railways in Europe the conclusion must be that several companies - two or more- must be granted possibilities to operate on the same rail line. Their production must of course be coordinated by negotiations very much the same as airlines must negotiate their starting and arrival times with the administrations of overcrowded airports, but their services should be marketed independently from each other in a competitive environment. Only then will the full potential for combined road and rail transport become realized.

REFERENCES

1. Callou, R. and Schwartz, D., (1979), Combined Transport; Technical, Commercial and Technical Aspects, Eighth International Symposium, ECMT, Istanbul. 2. Sjostedt, L. and Thalenius-Adolfsson, J., (1989), Bias and Volatility in International Cargo Carrier Flow, Paper to be presented at the 5th World Conference on Transport Research, Yokohama, Japan, July 10-14. 3. Cardebring, P., (1988), Freight Transport by Rail - An International Comparison, Freight Transportation in 10-20 years time, Report 1988:2, Swedish Board of Transport, Box 1339, S-171 26 Solna, Sweden. 4. Hagman, T., (1988), Transfer Technology and Unit Load Carriers in Intermodal Transport - A Description of a System, (In Swedish), Report 5, Department of Transportation and Logistics, Chalmers University of Techno- logy, S-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden. 5. Cardebring, P., (1989), The Development Potential of the Railway and Combined Traffic. Goods transport on rail - an International Comparison, (In Swedish). Paper presented at the Researchers' Days in Linkoping, January 10-11. To be published by the Swedish Road and Traffic Research Institute. 6. Seidelmann, C., (1986), Kombinierter Verkehr in der Flache - Angebots- verbesserung für den kombinierten Verkehr ausserhalb der Wirtschaftszentren durch das ULS-Produktionsverfahren, Forschungsvorhaben TV 7901 G des BFMT, Studiengesellschaft für den kombinierten Verkehr e. V., Frankfurt/M. 7. Bundesminister für Verkehr, (1981), Gütertransportsystem - Probleme, Alternativen, Chancen, Kirschbaum Verlag, Bonn. 8. Sjostedt, L., (1987), Das Minicontainersystem für kombinierten Verkehr, Presented at: Kombinierter Verkehr - Die Zukunft der Ladeeinheiten. Tagung 11. und 12. Juni, Osterreichisches Produktivitets- und Wirtschaftlichkeits- Zentrum.