Rail Freight Corridor NL - CZ final version - International ...

Rail Freight Corridor NL - CZ
market (the consultant estimate around 90%) is dedicated to the container flows of the owner of
the operator (Maersk, NYK and Hyundai).
According to one of our sources a round trip price per train costs around €44.000,-. This sum is
paid to the traction provider and does not differentiate by the occupancy rate of the train. The
occupancy rate is the risk of the operator. In general (according to our sources) 66% of the cost
are covered on the NL-CZ leg and 33% on the CZ-NL leg.
Of course also the transshipment costs need to be paid and also the pre-/end haulage to the
client. Depending on the distance to the client or shipper, the additional costs can run up to €
200. Therefore, a total “door-to-door” price would be between €600 and €800 for a 40 foot
container.
For road haulage NEA made use of cost models for international road haulage.
A trip by road haulage between The Netherlands and the Czech Republic is between €900 and
€1050, depending on the nationality of the driver. A truck can carry a 40 foot container.
However, in the next years the costs of road haulage will further increase due to:
• Introduction of the 48 hour working week
• Shortage of truck drivers
• More expensive diesel fuel
• Further introduction of road pricing systems and higher charges
This makes clear that the rail transport option has a lower cost price, an advantage of roughly
between 10% to 40% depending on the situation. Furthermore the expectation is that these cost
differences will increase, which is in favor of the rail transport.
1.4.2 Transit-time
The transport schedules of the most important rail shuttle services are presented in Annex 2.
They show that the time between the last deliverance and departure of the train is between 6
and 7 hours. The travel time depends per operator: ERS takes around 20 hours for one leg,
whereas CSKD Intrans around 30 hours.
If we take into account also the time needed for loading/unloading at the client, the total cycle
time would be between 32 and 40 hrs, again depending on the situation.
The door-to-door time for road haulage operations is about 28 hrs. Therefore the road haulage
is is most cases faster than rail transports. However, during the weekends, road haulage is not
possible due to driving bans. Over the weekend rail transport can be competitive or even faster.
Especially the rail transport services during the weekend are therefore a strong potential
alternative for road haulage between CZ and NL.
1.4.3 Punctuality
There is no general remark to make on train punctuality, especially not on the departure
punctuality.
Punctuality depends firstly on the operators policy on punctuality. ECT has two trains leaving
per day. Punctuality is therefore quite important; missing a train does not have much influence
30 Final report
R20080142