Railway PRO

POLICIES & STRATEGIES
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countries. It is believed that decision makers
involved in the financing of this corridor will
understand that the corridor goes beyond
the national borders and that it by no means
represents competition to the Orient / East-
Med corridor but covers the “great grey area”
of the Danube region and in addition gives
an opportunity to several countries, such as
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro to
be better linked with the rest of Europe. The
WBC has extreme value for Balkan region
which is still in poor condition with significant
infrastructure and non-infrastructure
bottlenecks. The cross-border rail freight varies
considerably in the individual countries
within the region and is not at the desired
level. Neither is the potential for multimodal
transport fully tapped.
There is another rail freight corridor initiative
started by Romania in 2013 on PA1b
agenda. An important trade exchange with
EU and important transit routes via the Danube
region with other continents the Danube
region could face an increase of goods
entering Europe from at least two Danube
macro-region multi-port gateway regions –
North Adriatic and West Black Sea. Since at
present the largest share of container traffic
towards the Danube region flows through
the Atlantic and North Sea ports efforts need
to be made to improve transshipment and
handling capabilities of Adriatic and Black
sea ports.
At the meeting between Slovenian prime
minister and Romanian foreign minister on
5th November 2013 initiative to establish
a corridor linking port of Constanta (Romania)
and port of Koper (Slovenia) was
discussed. This new rail freight corridor
would represent an important transport link
between two multi-port gateway regions at
Black Sea and at Adriatic Sea. It would also
contribute to development of intermodal
terminals and improving logistics performance
of the countries in the Region. Similar
to WBC Corridor several branches to link
better the region should be determined. As
the idea of the new corridor is spreading
around it has already got a nick name “TRA-
IANUS Railway Corridor”.
Railway PRO: What is your view on linking
beyond the Danube region?
Franc Žepič: In order to keep up with the
demand and not to slow down economic
development the improvement of today´s
transport service is of key importance for all
World economies. Looking on a larger scale
the big emerging markets in Asia, in particular
in China and India are connecting by land
with Europe mainly via the Russian Trans-
Siberian railway. The fact that both China
and Turkey are fast-growing economic centres
suggests for an alternative route to better
connect EU and Asia big markets. The international
transport corridor TRACECA (Europe-Caucasus-Asia)
called also “The Silk
road of the 21st century” directly feeds into
the Western Balkan Corridor and offers an
additional important reason to this corridor.
As four out of 13 members of TRACECA
programme are the countries of the Danube
region (Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and
Ukraine) activities of the TRACECA transport
corridor are also part of activities to
improve transport in the Danube region. In
order to share results a way how PA1b and
General Secretariat of TRACECA could cooperate
is to be explored in the near future.
In this context I would like to mention also
Examples of EUSDR projects
ExamplesofEUSDRprojects
the Organisation of the Black Sea Economic
Cooperation (BSEC) i.e. “The Wider Black
Sea Area” which covers also almost all countries
of the Danube Region, except Germany.
Activities within this Euroasian platform are
also important for transport, in particular
railway developments in the Danube region.
The present Action Plan in the field of Transport
sets the main guidelines for enhancing
mutually beneficial co-operation between
the BSEC Member States for the period
2013-2015 directed at the integration of the
national transport networks into the regional
ones and furthermore into the Trans European
Network and Euro-Asian Transport
Linkages.
As 50% growth of cargo handled in EU
ports is predicted by 2030, ports of the Danube
region, railway and logistics operators
need to adapt to handle the increased traffic
and at the same time give opportunity for
economic growth and creation of new jobs.
There are still significant performance gaps
between the Danube region countries, as
well as other Europe’s countries. Narrowing
the performance gap should produce more
efficiency in order to be able to cope with
predicted traffic increases.
Railway PRO: Although the strategy still
doesn’t have a set financing for 2014-2020, so
far, 400 projects have been directed through
the Priority Axis Coordinators worth EUR
49 Billion. What is the cost of the projects
identified by PA1B and what is the cost of
those in the railway sector?
Franc Žepič: Although for each project on
our list there are estimated costs it would be
difficult to give an exact figure. It is expected
that a planned study “Danube Region In- >
Projects: Almost 150 Projects Received! Rail 51%, road 27%, air 6%, intermodal 8%, horizontal 8 %
Letter of Recommendation: 34 awarded (seven rail projects)
Source: Franc Žepič, Bridging the Gap in Logistics between the Danube Region Countries
August 2014 | www.railwaypro.com