Environment protection -a major problem of tomorrow’s Europe (IV)

In order to be able to develop a transportation policy that should respect the environment, it is necessary to use certain instruments approved by European Union. In our previous issue, we used to talk about enforcing a special tolling in compliance with the marginal social cost applicable for all transportation modalities.

Within certain sensitive areas, such as urban agglomerations, mountain areas, corridors with an intense traffic, enforcement of a co-ordinating policy of regularisation all different transportation modalities, should include an evaluation of the highest external costs and the necessity of a quick reduction of pollution. Such policy should lead to a tolling modality that would create the motivation for using those less polluting transportation modalities, and permit the investors to make all the adequate and profitable investments.
An example of such a daring policy oriented toward the future, is enforceable in Switzerland, where due to the people of that country, all resources resulting from the royalty over the road track transportation are deposited as is also a part of the VAT, with the national fund for financing the infrastructure, which is used for financing the mountain railways, the Rail 2000 network, programs of phonic protection to noise, and the programs for connecting to the European high speed networks. Such a policy constituted the main subject of European debates during the meeting related to an agreement between European Union and Switzerland.
It would be preferable for such similar policies to be applied in a short time in the other countries of Europe, as recorded by the study on Viable Transportation systems from ecological point of view, study performed by OCDE.
As regarding the urban agglomerations, such policies should combine traffic regulations in the cities, financial support for public transportation, and many other issues related to the matter at hand. Some other priority measure should be taken into account if we want to avoid a possible asphyxiation of the areas with high population, within Westward Europe.
Approving such a common European methodology, for choosing the right investments in infrastructure and in the transportation integrated systems, under the form of social-economical balance sheets within the total aggregate of external costs, would prove to be very efficient.
This general measure could be very rapidly approved, as suggested by the Group on tolling tax with the European Commission.
Being long-term policies, the values retained for external costs, according to such evaluations, may be included within the limits recommended by specialists. On the other hand, transaction in progressive stages could also justify the taxes on exploitation, because of the enforcing complexity of such policies.

Improvement of railway supply on European level, for obtaining the long lasting mobility of transportation

Railway companies members of UIC and CCFE are determined to involve more deeply into the multi-modal re-balanced transportation system, than they used to do so far. The priorities for all people involved in the railway developing process, such as railway companies, UIC, CCFE, industrial companies reorganized within UNIFE, consist of the optimization of the commercial efficiency of such transportation system, considering the demands’ evolution of the clients, market and society. Railway could become this way, an indispensable element for a long lasting development process.

Exploitation of all railways’ trumps related to environment protection and traffic safety

Such resources may be as follows:
Continuation of the process for improving the efficiency of energetic power (through technical or exploiting solutions), reduction of acoustic pollution, especially to the noise within the carriages (included in an European plan);
Maintenance of a high degree in the process of insuring the railway exploitation safety, by pursuing a global coherence of railway systems, no matter what organization structure may have (exploiting infrastructure separation, etc.) and by employing all technical inventions as telecommunication, artificial intelligence, etc, for the benefit of traffic safety.

Improving service quality

• Enforcing all the available quality supervising systems for services and products, on a global level, such as ISO quality control certificate, quality control for European freight trains, agreement between railways and chemical industry related to transportation of dangerous materials, etc.
• Developing the integrated information and trading systems for clients who benefit of public or freight railway transportation, due to the possibilities Internet has to offer and to the electronic trading systems, in places where the information quality corresponds to the essential quality pattern demanded by the client;
• Developing certain traffic administration centers, which should reunite different commercial producers, for the purpose of administrating in an optimal manner the “gate to gate” procedure;
• Developing further contractual relationships with the clients, with precise representations on the quality criteria (informing and searching for solutions in the event of some possible misunderstandings, returning of damages in case of delaying, etc.);
• Using all the inter-modality advantages. Creating new relationships with other transportation operators, as road, naval and aerial operators and those from the public urban transportation, improving the correspondence among all transportation routes, simplifying the organization structure in transportation, which will appeal to all the clients, being thus another criterion in quality.

Improving the international railway supply on the market

• Achievement of international interoperability, depending on the works performed in collaboration, by and between railway companies, UIC and industry, with the support of the European Union. Considerable efforts for one railway Europe without frontiers, has been registered during the process of implementing the ERTMS program (which includes control-remote ETCS systems and the railway radio systems), vehicle detecting systems, techniques for changing the gauging device on international or national rails, as those from Russia, etc;
• International homogenization beyond technical and operational aspects, in legislative and commercial domains, for creating a railway Europe which should include also the East European countries.
• Introducing certain administrative structures more appropriate to the market needs, including the entire international dimension (joint-ventures, association of several railway companies, etc);
• Following up certain specific projects, for the development of trans-European network, which are indispensable for the amelioration of competition within the railway field. This process also includes all the involved parties in the national, European and regional financial programs. The high-speed network and the fright trans-European one are going to be favored due to the extension of the existing freight railway transportation corridors. Competition will be also stimulated once the pane-European railway corridors “Creta” and “Helsinki” will be built and once the long-term project for the construction of fright railway corridors, which will connect Europe to Asia and Middle East.

The objectives of the long-lasting mobility need impose a greater transfer of public and freight road transportation to the railway transportation modality. Certain existing capacity limits could be rearranged, due to the introduction of the best administration techniques for traffic, such as ETCS.
Railway companies are aware that they have to follow this direction. They evaluate through different procedures, the importance of freight transportation depending on public transportation, in order to better respond to the clients expectations as related to freight railway transportation, without degrading the service quality toward the public. In this sense, they are studying on the best exploitation modalities of the available capacities for the existing infrastructure and under the perspectives of creating a new infrastructure system, specialized in freight transportation. Such process is correlated to the plans of the European Union for the development of the trans - European freight railway network.

Reporting, Silvia Mitulescu