Europe needs ‘consistent & connected’ high speed rail network

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European and national politicians need to avoid building a ‘Two(high)Speed’ Europe.

This was the main message delivered at the event ‘Putting European high speed rail on the fast track’ co-organised by the Polish Presidency and CER on 19 October.

Hosted by the European Parliament’s EPP Group, the political debate gathered high level representatives from the European Commission, Parliament, Council, and the rail sector.

Participants discussed possible ways how to fulfill the European Commission’s objective to triple the length of high speed lines in Europe by 2030, as stated in the 2011 Transport White Paper.

In his introductory remarks, Andrzej Massel, Polish Vice-Minister of Infrastructure, current Vice Chairman of the Transport Council, underlined the importance of European and national authorities joining forces to bridge the existing gap between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe and welcomed the publication of the TEN-T guidelines on the same day.

With high speed, ‘rail will become more competitive towards other modes of transport, thereby helping to reduce CO2 emissions in line with White Paper’s objectives’.

Poland is actively working on a high-speed rail network. Zbigniew Szafrański, President of the Management Board of PKP PLK S.A, said that the first high speed line was built in 1977 in Poland, originally meant for freight, but with the vision of trains running at 250km/hr.

He underlined the need to modernise the existing Polish network as well as to build new high-speed lines.

Looking at the opportunities of connecting high speed rail to road and aviation routes, Jean-Eric Paquet, Director of European Mobility Network in DG MOVE, presented the main lines of the revised TEN-T guidelines and the Connecting Europe Facility, published by the European Commission on the day of the event.

In line with the Transport White Paper, the new TEN-T network sees rail as the ‘backbone of European transport, reflecting the Commission’s intention to promote inter-city high speed rail links and to connect airports to (high speed) rail’.

MEP Artur Zasada (EPP, PL) confirmed the Commission’s view about the complementarity between rail and air.

“Improving rail connections between airports and cities as well as between airports is crucial, especially in crisis situations such as the Icelandic ash cloud in the air transport sector.

“The natural alternative during such extreme situations should be high speed rail,” he said.

He mentioned the current work on the “Y” project between Warsaw, Wroclaw, Poznan and Krakow, the first high speed project in Central and Eastern Europe.

Michel Jadot, Director General of SNCB/NMBS, presented the views of a carrier operating in a country situated in the centre of an already well developed and busy high speed rail network, the well-known ‘London-Paris-Brussels-Cologne-Amsterdam’ route.

As a ‘relatively small operator, SNCB is taking strong positions in distribution and is developing partnerships with other rail operators as well as airlines’.

Finally, as underlined by MEP Bogdan Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz (EPP, PL), reducing the dependence of the European Union to oil is also one of the objectives of the Commission’s Transport White Paper.

To further develop rail traffic will be ‘crucial to increasing the EU’s energy independency’.

Concluding the discussions, CER Deputy Executive Director Libor Lochman, stated:

“A complete, connected and consistent high speed network is the future of medium and long-distance rail services, both passenger and freight.

“However, member states and the EU will have to ensure that the level playing field is established across all transport modes and that building a high-speed EU network will not be done at the expense of conventional, i.e. intercity and regional, passenger services.

“Not only the high-speed railway networks should be connected, but they should also be consistent with and complementary to a well-functioning conventional railway network.”

 

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