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Selected Online Reading on Railway Transport

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Selected e-articles on Railway Transport in Europe

Publisher's note : There is an increasing number of voices calling for asymmetric regulation to reinforce competition in European railways as they are liberalized in December 2020. The regulatory framework defined in the Directives of the European Union (EU) might be insufficient to ensure effective and widespread competition. But the EU Directive declares tracks a natural monopoly, and structural measures in the form of vertical separation with transport activities have been imposed. Behavioral obligations have also been imposed on infrastructure managers in the form of access obligations. There is no room for asymmetry between competing networks, as tracks are a natural monopoly. Furthermore, as access conditions are ruled by the principle of nondiscrimination, it does not seem possible to introduce asymmetries in favor of newcomers, for instance in the form of access charges below the price charged to incumbent railway undertakings. For the rest of railway assets, which only exceptionally can be considered essential facilities, the EU Directives either impose no access obligations (rolling stock, drivers, ticketing systems) or when they impose access obligations (maintenance facilities), there is no formal asymmetry, as all undertakings are subject to the same access obligations. National regulatory authorities considering the introduction of asymmetric access obligations should take into account economic literature describing how asymmetries attract inefficient market entry, and they should consider that obligations introduced at a national level might fragment the Single European Railway Area.

Publisher's note : In this work, we report about the results of a joint research project between Friedrich–Alexander–Universität Erlangen–Nürnberg and Deutsche Bahn AG on the optimal expansion of the German railway network until 2030. The need to increase the throughput of the network is given by company-internal demand forecasts that indicate an increase in rail freight traffic of about 50% over the next two decades. Our focus is to compute an optimal investment strategy into line capacities given an available annual budget, i.e., we are to choose the most profitable lines to upgrade with respect to the demand scenario under consideration and to provide a schedule according to which the chosen measures are implemented. This leads to a multiperiod network design problem—a class of problems that has received increasing interest over the past decade. We develop a mixed-integer programming formulation to model the situation and solve it via a novel decomposition approach that we call multiple-knapsack decomposition. The method can both be used as a quick heuristic and allows for the extension to an exact algorithm for the problem. We demonstrate its potential by solving a real-world problem instance provided by Deutsche Bahn AG and use the results as the basis for a broad case study for the expansion of the German railway network until 2030.

Publisher's note : Cet article montre comment la Région Occitanie s’appuie sur la croyance en un effet territorial du transport ferroviaire pour incarner une unité régionale mise à mal par le redécoupage administratif intervenu le 1er janvier 2016. Une approche diachronique permet de retracer les origines de cette croyance et comment elle se nourrit d’un imaginaire ferroviaire ambivalent remontant au XIXe siècle. Cet imaginaire fait du transport ferroviaire aussi bien un vecteur de développement économique qu’un élément de remise en cause des systèmes urbains locaux. L’article montre aussi comment ce mythe a été entretenu et renforcé à travers les anciennes politiques régionales de transports qui s’étaient traduites par un renforcement des offres au sein des anciens périmètres régionaux. Pour cela un indice d’accessibilité a été construit afin de mesurer l’évolution de ces offres depuis la décentralisation. Outre cette approche quantitative, la méthodologie employée s’appuie sur l’analyse de discours d’élus, de documents de communication et de travaux de chercheurs qui participent tous, à des degrés divers, au maintien de cette croyance.

Publisher's note : This paper presents the evolution of public transport contracts in France and the historical and legal contexts which led to their reorganisation. We first examine the evolution of the territorial distribution of institutional powers in transportation mainly for passengers. A focus is made on the regional passenger railway reform in France that allowed the 20 French metropolitan regions to become transport organising authorities following a first experiment by seven volunteer regions. The Nord-Pas de Calais region is taken as an example. Then the urban public transport contracts are analysed focussing on different possibilities of contract and finally, the specific case of transport organisation in the Paris Île de France region is studied.

Publisher's note : La concurrence appliquée à la grande vitesse ferroviaire est sans doute bénéfique pour accroître les performances des opérateurs de transport, comme le montre l’article de Frederico Antoniazzi et al. (2019). Mais l’est-elle pour les territoires ? L’article analyse alors les motivations et intérêts de quatre acteurs différents par rapport à la grande vitesse ferroviaire : les voyageurs, les transporteurs, le gestionnaire de réseau et les territoires. Notre hypothèse principale est que la concurrence renforce la dynamique propre des réseaux qui favorise les pôles, le débit et la massification dans une logique de métropolisation. Elle accentue par conséquent les contrastes territoriaux. Les territoires, eux-mêmes en concurrence, permettent d’amortir à la marge l’effet d’archipel issu des réseaux à grande vitesse. Entre le temps court de la concurrence et celui plus long de la cohésion territoriale, les formes de la régulation entre les différentes parties prenantes restent à inventer.

Publisher's note : The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact created by the introduction of competition within the Italian high-speed rail (HSR) market. This paper aims at comparing the situation before and after the liberalisation process, taking into account the EU’s fundamental contribution from a legal point of view. To support this demonstration, economic and statistical analyses were used to estimate quantitatively changes and trends within the market. While some contradictory positions exist, for and against liberalisation, this paper also focuses on the issues related to the environment and to territorial development when considering the impact of competition. Finally this paper demonstrates how liberalisation has brought multiple benefits, also considering that the arrival of a new competitor on the market (Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori) has reduced travel prices and increased quality for customers, without decreasing the revenues of the incumbent company (Trenitalia).

Publisher's note : On November 12, 2016, in Romania the Law no. 202/2016 on the integration of the Romanian railway system into the single European railway area come into force after the 2012/34/EU Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 November 2012 on the establishment of the single European railway area was adopted in 2012. It is later adopted in Strasbourg on 18 April 2018 and will enter into force on 02.05.2018 The Regulation 643/2018 on rail transport statistics. Statistics on freight and passenger rail transport are needed to enable the Commission to oversee and develop the common transport policy as well as the transport elements of policies on trans-European regions and networks. Under Directive 2004/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on safety on the Community's railways, each Member State of the European Union must establish a national safety authority. In Romania, the Romanian Railway Safety Authority - ASFR2, was set up as a national body responsible for the tasks related to railway safety.

Publisher's note : Ecological and sustainable modes of transport should be the main modes of transport of goods. Promotion of railway freight transport is a key element of the EU policy. It is important to have an appropriate transport infrastructure to ensure sustainable competitive railway transport. It is able to ensure the most flexible mobility of the goods with the most advantageous parameters. This article analyses the current status as well the level of achievement of the objectives set by the European Commission. The article also deals with the established nine corridors for international railway freight transport. The aim is to introduce different measures that should help increase the efficiency and competitiveness of railway freight transport in the European countries under CIM transportation mode. When designing new corridors, it is necessary to analyse and optimize the current railway network. Optimization solutions are used to analyse the network analysis methods. In particular, the critical path method (CPM) and the critical chain method (CCM) are used.

Publisher's note : The starting point of this article is the weak usage of rail freight in Belgium and Europe, both as a sustainable mode of land transportation in itself as well as a part of the intermodal chain. The results are obtained by transversal research on rail freight transport in Belgium, taking into account the European context. This interdisciplinary research develops a road map for the creation of three integrated scenarios: a best case, medium case and worst case scenario for rail freight development, based on a detailed SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities, threats) analysis. It includes the most probable future developments for rail freight transport and hinterland connections. These developments are obtained from literature review and discussions with a heterogeneous panel of experts in the fields of (i) optimal corridor and hub development, (ii) macroeconomic impact, (iii) sustainability, (iv) effective market regulation and (v) governance and organization for a well-functioning intermodality. The Delphi approach is used in combination with a survey analysis. Frequency tables and the H-index allow defining a ranking and selection of SWOT elements. The obtained scenarios allow future research to quantify and measure the impact of future developments and decisions towards the Belgian rail freight market.

Publisher's note: À l’heure du développement durable, satisfaire les besoins des populations en recourant davantage au transport ferroviaire semble une nécessité, notamment en Europe. Effectivement, de grands projets sont en cours de réalisation. Mais quels territoires cela avantage-t-il ? La France, qui affirme qu’elle construira le TGV Lyon-Turin, ou la « dorsale européenne », cet espace qui va de la plaine du Pô en Italie à la région londonienne, en passant par la Suisse, l’Allemagne rhénane et le Benelux ?

Publisher's note : The structure of transport networks is the outcome of a large number of infrastructure investment decisions taken over a long time span. Network indicators are widely used for characterizing transport network topology and its performance as well as provide insights on possible developments. Little is known however on how rail bound public transport networks and their network indicators have evolved into their current form. This study conducts a longitudinal analysis of the topological evolution of a multimodal rail network by investigating the dynamics of its topology for the case of Stockholm in 1950–2025. The starting year marks the opening of the metro system while the end year is set to mark the completion of the current development plan. Based on a compilation of network topology and service properties, a year-on-year analysis of changes in global network efficiency and directness as well as local nodal centrality were conducted. Changes in network topology exhibit smooth long-term technological and spatial trends as well as the signature of top-down planning interventions. Stockholm rail network evolution is characterized by contraction and stagnation periods followed by network extensions and is currently undergoing a considerable densification, marking a shift from peripheral attachment to preferential attachment.

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