Brussels, 19/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - The landscape of transport infrastructure will change drastically in the next decades, via a juxtaposition of national networks and a genuinely European network, the better to serve the single market, with priority to rail and ports.
The end of the patchwork. This is the aim of the new strategy for the trans-European transport network (TEN-T) presented by the European Commission on Wednesday 19 October. Siim Kallas, European Commissioner for Transport, summed up these new ideas by stating that we must “move from a patchwork to a network” and that “if transport is not made easier, our economy will suffer from this and stop growing”. He lamented the state of play today: “there is currently a lack of connections of major importance. Europe has seven different rail guage sizes; only 20 of our principal airports and 35 of our major ports are directly connected to the railway network. Without working connections, Europe cannot develop or prosper.”
The watchword is “connection”. After two years of consultation with the member states and stakeholders, the commissioner's staff have been able to draw a map of an ideal network to be completed by 2050. This will interconnect the current national networks, making them more interoperable to facilitate cross-border travel, whilst taking account of the imperative need to get rid of bottlenecks and adapt to climate change. In the coming decades, the emphasis will be on building the missing links of the TEN-T and on connections between various modes of transports, with a view to creating European added value. “The local populations rightly want connections which work. But what we can do is to make sure that these connections come from somewhere and go somewhere, that there is a link to a European network. That is European added value”, the commissioner stressed.
Central and global networks. The new orientations for the TEN-T include a central network, the priority between now and 2030, made up of the most important intermodal routes and hubs of the EU in the form of 10 corridors. These will be fed into by the global network, which will be in place by 2050, and which will allow the European citizens to join up with the central network in under 30 minutes. In the immediate future, the infrastructure work co-financed by the EU will therefore focus on the central network, which will eventually comprise 83 European ports linked to the rail and road networks, of 15,000 km of high speed-adapted railways, train lines linking 37 airports to cities, and lastly 35 corss-border projects which will help ease congestion. However, Kallas stresses that to do this, “we are not starting from scratch, it is based on work which has already been done” and that the work underway on the TEN-T will be maintained.
Corridors. To make it easier to develop this central network, the Commission has concentrated the priority projects along corridors covering the whole of the European territory. Ten corridors will be included, with joint characteristics such as going via three European countries via two cross-border sections, and using three modes of transport. For example, improving connections betwee Dublin and Brussels via Paris and London, or linking the German port of Hamburg to the Cypriot port of Lefkosia using navigation and rail via the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. The management of the infrastructure work involving multiple parties and member states presupposes good coordination. As a result, the new outlines provide “platforms of corridors” to ensure a convergence of the work. These platforms will be headed by European coordinators: “we need coordinators, or else in 2020 we will still be wondering why some of these projects are so far from finished, why there are missing links”, Siim Kallas explained.
Where will the money come from? The new strategy provides a map for each country, to an estimated total of €500 billion for 2014-2020, including €250 billion for the central network. The concerns focus on the instruments which will pay for this change of landscape in the transport infrastructure in Europe. The announcement the same day of €31.7 billion available for transport via the mechanism for interconnection in Europe (see other article) is a drop in the ocean compared to the ambitions of the new strategy for the TEN-T… The Commission states that this envelope is “start-up capital” and is hoping for a leverage effect to incentivise the member states to invest more. Recent experience shows that every million invested at European level engenders investments on the part of the member states to a level of €5 million and €20 million from the private sector… With co-financing rates between 20 and 50% for the costs of the work, it could be a bitter pill for the member states to swallow, as they are already hit hard by the crisis. It remains to be seen whether obligatory loans, the new funding instrument presented by the Commission on Wednesday 19 (see other article), will help to convince the member states, even more than the new maps … (MD/transl.fl)