Josef Doppelbauer, Executive Director of the European Union Railway Agency (ERA), warned of the fragmentation of the European rail system at a hearing of the European Parliament’s Committee on Transport and Tourism (TRAN) on Wednesday 4 September. Caused by a lack of funding, this fragmentation greatly hampers the efficiency of rail transport.
“We run a real risk of not achieving modal shift targets, but this should be a motivation [...] to fight fragmentation”, warned Mr Doppelbauer. “We need political will and a European spirit, and then we can get there; it’s a long-term project and we need to be persistent”, he added.
He pointed out that the rail system is complex and costly, with infrastructure that has a long lifetime. Consequently, any strategy must take a long-term view. “Fragmentation of the system leads to fragmentation of the product, which leads to oligopolies of suppliers, which increases costs, so we need to bring costs down while increasing investment”, he explained.
When asked about the digital automatic coupling (DAC), he described the screw coupler as “an anachronism”. “The problem of cost needs to be resolved in an efficient way, we need a complete standardisation. If we don’t standardise, we will kill rail freight”, he asserted.
He also mentioned the language problems between the different countries. “There are several attempts to find technological solutions with machine translation. [...] The only viable solution is to opt for a second language for train drivers, which could be English, but doesn’t necessarily have to be”, he said. He cited the example of the maritime and aviation sectors, where English is already the standard language.
Finally, with regard to the management of rail infrastructure capacity, he said he was “disappointed” by the EU Council’s decision to return this role to the Member States (see EUROPE 13434/3). “We need cooperation at EU level, control and distribution of capacity at EU level, otherwise it won’t work; we’re wasting time and not helping to make rail more efficient”, he concluded. (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)