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strana 26
Brussel´s news
The future
high-speed rail network:
complete, connected,
and consistent
European and national politicians need to avoid building a “Two(high)
Speed” Europe. This was the main message delivered at the event
“Putting European high-speed rail on the fast track” co-organised by
the Polish Presidency and CER on 19 October. Hosted by the European
Parliament’s EPP Group, the political debate gathered high level
representatives from the European Commission, Parliament, Council,
and the rail sector. Participants discussed possible ways how to fulfill the
European Commission’s objective to triple the length of high-speed lines
in Europe by 2030, as stated in the 2011 Transport White Paper.
In his introductory remarks, Andrzej Massel,
Polish Vice-Minister of Infrastructure,
current Vice-Chairman of the Transport
Council, underlined the importance of
European and national authorities joining
forces to bridge the existing gap between
Western Europe and Central and Eastern
Europe and welcomed the publication of
the TEN-T guidelines on the same day. With
high-speed, rail will become more competitive
towards other modes of transport,
thereby helping to reduce CO 2 emissions in
line with White Paper’s objectives.
Poland is actively working on a high-speed
rail network. Zbigniew Szafrański, President
of the Management Board of PKP PLK
S.A, reminded that the first High-Speed
line was built in 1977 in Poland, originally
meant for freight, but with the vision of
trains running at 250km/hr. He underlined
the need to modernize the existing Polish
network as well as to build new high-speed
lines.
Looking at the opportunities of connecting
high-speed rail to road and aviation routes,
Jean-Eric Paquet, Director of European Mobility
Network in DG MOVE, presented the
main lines of the revised TEN-T guidelines
and the Connecting Europe Facility, published
by the European Commission on the
day of this event. In line with the Transport
White Paper, the new TEN-T network sees
rail as the backbone of European transport,
reflecting the Commission’s intention
to promote inter-city high-speed rail links
and to connect airports to (high-speed)
rail.
MEP Artur Zasada (EPP, PL) confirmed the
Commission’s view about the complementarity
between rail and air. Improving rail
connections between airports and cities as
well as between airports is crucial, especially
in crisis situations such as the Icelandic
ash cloud in the air transport sector.
The natural alternative during such extreme
situations should be high-speed rail.
He mentioned the current work on the “Y”
project between Warsaw, Wroclaw, Poznan
and Krakow, the first-high speed project in
Central and Eastern Europe.
Michel Jadot, Director General of SNCB/
NMBS, presented the views of a carrier
operating in a country situated in the centre
of an already well developed and busy
high-speed rail network, the well-known
“London-Paris-Brussels-Cologne-Amsterdam”
area. As a relatively small operator,
SNCB is taking strong positions in distribution
and is developing partnerships with
other rail operators as well as airlines.
Finally, as underlined by MEP Bogdan Kazimierz
Marcinkiewicz (EPP, PL), reducing the
dependence of the European Union to oil is
also one of the objectives of the Commission’s
Transport White Paper. To further develop
rail traffic will be crucial to increase
the EU’s energy independency.
Concluding the discussions, CER Deputy
Executive Director Libor Lochman, stated
that “a complete, connected and consistent
high-speed network is the future of
medium and long-distance rail services,
both passenger and freight. However,
member states and the EU will have to
ensure that the level playing field is established
across all transport modes and
that building a high-speed EU network will
not be done at the expense of conventional,
i.e. intercity and regional, passenger
services. Not only the high-speed railway
networks should be connected, but they
should also be consistent with and complementary
to a well-functioning conventional
railway network”.
Source: CER