EU transport chief calls for common rail standards

[John Ashworth]

EU transport chief calls for common rail standards

Siim Kallas vows to push ahead with reforms requiring national rail networks to open up to competition

Gwyn Topham in Berlin
The Guardian, Tuesday 18 September 2012 17.44 BST

A single European rail network with genuinely open competition and common standards is urgently needed to let trains relieve congested roads, according to EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas. He has vowed to push ahead with reforms requiring national rail networks to open up, which could lead to direct trains from Britain to destinations across the continent.

At the opening of Innotrans, one of Europe's largest transport conventions, in Berlin, Kallas said €20bn (£16bn) of a €50bn European infrastructure fund could be made available for national transport projects to make the networks interoperable, helping stimulate growth. He proposed a single central rail agency to certify all new rolling stock built to a single standard across the continent.

"There must be a genuine single market," he said. "Eighty per cent of people and goods are taken by Europe's roads, and they are saturated. People expect railways to provide some alternatives."

The German transport minister, Peter Ramsauer, said such reform was needed but would be "incredibly difficult" to implement and would cost €4.5bn for the German track alone. He urged Kallas to think further, suggesting that achieving common standards should be intercontinental, with China drawing up plans for a high-speed connection from Europe across Russia to Xinjiang.

Kallas said he believed opening up national markets along the lines of Britain's franchising model was beneficial to passengers and had provided better value for money. He said few other EU states had truly opened up their markets to competition, despite previous directives, with conditions skewed in favour of domestic operators, particularly where train companies still operated the track. In Germany and France the state firms Deutsche Bahn and SNCF still dominate.

Ramsauer said he would welcome competition, but accused the French of dragging their feet. "If we want to travel by ICE (the German fast train) from Frankfurt to London, we need France to open up and so we absolutely have to do the same in Germany," he said.

However, the minister said he did not believe that Britain's experience had provided a good model for regulation of the network. "In Britain, they took it to excess and failed. We will not make that mistake. We will keep a government role."

The Deutsche Bahn chairman, Rüdiger Grube, welcomed the idea of more competition – "so we can show how good we are," he said.

The convention in Berlin is expected to pull in 100,000 trade visitors from around the world, with 115 new trains on display on tracks outside 26 large conference halls filled with global exhibitors ranging from Bombardier and Siemens to small suppliers of parts. Network Rail also has a presence here as its new, deregulated private consulting arm touts for business abroad.

[M. Hardy-Randall]

There are two major barriers to the United Kingdom running through trains for passengers, one is called the Border Agency and the other is Customs and Excise. Freight has the problem of the British loading gauge being much smaller than the rest of Europe so trains have to start or end in east London..

I was a regular traveller on cross border trains, at a time long before the Shengen agreement, when customs and immigration came on the train just before the Swiss border and carried out their duties whilst the train was running. For reasons unknown the UK authorities say that is not possible. A through train from London to Basel/Zürich would be perfect. On this rare occasion I hope the EU win.