Vol 9 No 1 (2009)
Vol 9 No 1 (2009)
Articles
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EJTIR Volume 9, Issue 1
Table of Contents
Editorial boardReferee Acknowledgement 2008
Editorial
Special Issue: Rail Freight Interoperability in Europe: Lessons from the Reorient Project
Pages 1-3
Lóri TavasszyAssessing the Variation in Rail Interoperability in 11 European Countries, and Barriers to its
Improvement
Pages 4-30
Warren E. Walker, Gerrit Baarse, Andre van Velzen and Tuuli JärviLiberalisation of Rail Freight Markets in the Old and New EU-Member States
Pages 31-45
Johanna Ludvigsen and Oddgeir OslandLiberalisation of Rail Freight Markets in Central and South-Eastern Europe: What the
European Commission Can Do to Facilitate Rail Market Opening
Pages 46-62
Johanna LudvigsenDrivers of Intermodal Rail Freight Growth in North America
Pages 63-82
John C. Spychalski and Evelyn ThomchickEJTIR Volume 9, Issue 1
Table of Contents
Editorial boardReferee Acknowledgement 2008
Editorial
Special Issue: Rail Freight Interoperability in Europe: Lessons from the Reorient Project
Pages 1-3
Lóri TavasszyAssessing the Variation in Rail Interoperability in 11 European Countries, and Barriers to its
Improvement
Pages 4-30
Warren E. Walker, Gerrit Baarse, Andre van Velzen and Tuuli JärviLiberalisation of Rail Freight Markets in the Old and New EU-Member States
Pages 31-45
Johanna Ludvigsen and Oddgeir OslandLiberalisation of Rail Freight Markets in Central and South-Eastern Europe: What the
European Commission Can Do to Facilitate Rail Market Opening
Pages 46-62
Johanna LudvigsenDrivers of Intermodal Rail Freight Growth in North America
Pages 63-82
John C. Spychalski and Evelyn ThomchickEJTIR Volume 9, Issue 1
Table of Contents
Editorial boardReferee Acknowledgement 2008
Editorial
Special Issue: Rail Freight Interoperability in Europe: Lessons from the Reorient Project
...
Pages 1-3
Lóri Tavasszy -
Editorial Board EJTIR
Bert van Wee (Editor in Chief)
Delft University of TechnologyCaspar Chorus (Co-Editor in Chief)
Delft University of TechnologyVincent Marchau (Secretary)
Delft University of TechnologySerge Hoogendoorn
Delft University of TechnologyDominic Stead
Delft University of TechnologyLóri Tavasszy
Radboud University NijmegenRob van der Heijden
Radboud University NijmegenEddy van de Voorde
University of AntwerpAdvisory Board EJTIR
Peter Nijkamp (Chairman)
The NetherlandsStef Weijers
The NetherlandsErik Verhoef
The NetherlandsDaniel Schefer
IsraelFrank Sanders
The NetherlandsPiet Rietveld
The NetherlandsAura Regiani
ItalyRobert Paaswell
United States of AmericaRicco Maggi
SwitzerlandMartin Lanzendorf
The NetherlandsVeli Himanen
FinlandIngo Hansen
The NetherlandsMarina van Geenhuizen
The NetherlandsPiet Bovy
The NetherlandsMichel Beuthe
BelgiumDavid Banister
United KingdomEditorial Board EJTIR
Bert van Wee (Editor in Chief)
Delft University of TechnologyCaspar Chorus (Co-Editor in Chief)
Delft University of TechnologyVincent Marchau (Secretary)
Delft University of TechnologySerge Hoogendoorn
Delft University of TechnologyDominic Stead
Delft University of TechnologyLóri Tavasszy
Radboud University NijmegenRob van der Heijden
Radboud University NijmegenEddy van de Voorde
University of AntwerpAdvisory Board EJTIR
Peter Nijkamp (Chairman)
The NetherlandsStef Weijers
The NetherlandsErik Verhoef
The NetherlandsDaniel Schefer
IsraelFrank Sanders
The NetherlandsPiet Rietveld
The NetherlandsAura Regiani
ItalyRobert Paaswell
United States of AmericaRicco Maggi
SwitzerlandMartin Lanzendorf
...
The NetherlandsEditorial Board EJTIR
Bert van Wee (Editor in Chief)
Delft University of TechnologyCaspar Chorus (Co-Editor in Chief)
Delft University of TechnologyVincent Marchau (Secretary)
Delft University of TechnologySerge Hoogendoorn
Delft... -
EJTIR wishes to acknowlegde the following referees, whose efforts have made possible the publication of EJTIR’s regular issues 8.1, 8.3 and 8.4.
Al-Mudhaffar
Asi
Banister
Bovy
Brookhuis
Bruinsma
Button
Carbone
Carizossa
Cheng
Correljee
Council
Currie
De Bok
De Jong
De Langen
De Martino
Dijkstra
Easa
Elvik
Gillen
Gray
Gudmundsson
Hagiwara
Hartmann
Hauer
Hegeman
Hellendoorn
Hood
Janssen
Kikuchi
Koetse
Kuipers
Le Bouthillier
Maat
Mattsson
Meurs
Molenaar
Monteiro
Muller
Nash
Pels
Plastria
Potoglou
Priemus
Protopapas
Odeck
Quinet
Reurings
Roorda
Rouphail
Slack
Smith
Tavasszy
Thomas
Tye
Van de Riet
Van de Velde
Vanelslander
Van Lint
Van Nes
Van Woensel
Veeneman
Verhoef
Vigo
Viti
Vovsha
Walker
Witlox
Wong
Ziggers
ZoetemanEJTIR wishes to acknowlegde the following referees, whose efforts have made possible the publication of EJTIR’s regular issues 8.1, 8.3 and 8.4.
Al-Mudhaffar
Asi
Banister
Bovy
Brookhuis
Bruinsma
Button
Carbone
Carizossa
Cheng
Correljee
Council
Currie
De Bok
De Jong
De Langen
De Martino
Dijkstra
Easa
Elvik
Gillen
Gray
Gudmundsson
Hagiwara
Hartmann
Hauer
Hegeman
Hellendoorn
Hood
Janssen
Kikuchi
Koetse
Kuipers
Le Bouthillier
Maat
Mattsson
Meurs
Molenaar
Monteiro
Muller
Nash
Pels
Plastria
Potoglou
Priemus
Protopapas
Odeck
Quinet
Reurings
Roorda
Rouphail
Slack
Smith
Tavasszy
Thomas
Tye
Van de Riet
Van de Velde
Vanelslander
Van Lint
Van Nes
Van Woensel
Veeneman
Verhoef
Vigo
Viti
Vovsha
Walker
Witlox
Wong
Ziggers
ZoetemanEJTIR wishes to acknowlegde the following referees, whose efforts have made possible the publication of EJTIR’s regular issues 8.1, 8.3 and 8.4.
... -
The outlook of a liberalised rail freight sector, which functions in a seamless way throughout Europe, is a promising one. A market which is open for competition for rail freight services will allow transportation to become faster, cheaper and more reliable, to the benefit of the EU economies. Moreover, it will strengthen the railways’ competitive position compared to road transport – another strategic objective of the EU transport policy. The task of re-organisation is a complex one however, as market liberalisation and international harmonisation processes interact. On the one hand, as rail only competes well with road transport over longer distances, the view towards liberalisation needs to be a truly international one. For the EU member states, this creates a dilemma: stimulate transport demand by actively promoting the development of internationally competing services, or protect domestic sectoral interests by passively resisting a competitive market? Fact is, the European railways system still struggles with very fragmented physical and management structures, due to national borders, rules and standards. In other words, national systems are not “interoperable”. If we want to be able to handle the expected growth of European freight flows, improvements in the European rail freight system, including its governance and management, are needed. This is the field of research we focus on in this special issue.
The outlook of a liberalised rail freight sector, which functions in a seamless way throughout Europe, is a promising one. A market which is open for competition for rail freight services will allow transportation to become faster, cheaper and more reliable, to the benefit of the EU economies. Moreover, it will strengthen the railways’ competitive position compared to road transport – another strategic objective of the EU transport policy. The task of re-organisation is a complex one however, as market liberalisation and international harmonisation processes interact. On the one hand, as rail only competes well with road transport over longer distances, the view towards liberalisation needs to be a truly international one. For the EU member states, this creates a dilemma: stimulate transport demand by actively promoting the development of internationally competing services, or protect domestic sectoral interests by passively resisting a competitive market? Fact is, the...
The outlook of a liberalised rail freight sector, which functions in a seamless way throughout Europe, is a promising one. A market which is open for competition for rail freight services will allow transportation to become faster, cheaper and more reliable, to the benefit of the EU economies....
Lóri Tavasszy -
Work conducted within REORIENT, a Sixth Framework project for the European Commission (EC), is described. One objective of REORIENT was to explain the status of transformation of the European railway sector into a functionally integrated, liberalized, interoperable system. The status of interoperability within and between eleven countries in a corridor stretching from Greece to the Nordic countries was assessed, and conditions in the countries that appear to be barriers to achieving the EC’s goals were identified. (Barriers were defined as shortcomings in conditions that would facilitate the implementation of requirements presumed by the EC to lead to seamless international freight transport (“implementation conditions”)). The primary data source for the analysis was a set of interviews with the major actors and stakeholders associated with each country’s rail freight system. The (qualitative) information from the interviews was translated into numeric scores, which were subjected to statistical analysis. The primary objective of the statistical analysis was to provide an assessment of the relationships between the requirements and the implementation conditions. The statistical analysis involved both the identification of relevant relationships and an assessment of the strength of these relationships. Overall, we found that there was considerable variation in interoperability status across the countries on practically all of the requirements. However, there was also considerable variation in the status of the implementation conditions across the countries. As a result, we found that most of the variability was able to be explained by relationships that were found to exist between the requirements and implementation conditions. A ‘Barrier Significance Score’ (BSS) was computed for each country and for each implementation condition. These scores were used to assess the relative importance of barriers across the countries, and to identify the most critical barriers to be removed in order to improve interoperability. Large differences in BSS’s were found among countries. In general there are fewer barriers in Nordic countries and more barriers in the south.
Work conducted within REORIENT, a Sixth Framework project for the European Commission (EC), is described. One objective of REORIENT was to explain the status of transformation of the European railway sector into a functionally integrated, liberalized, interoperable system. The status of interoperability within and between eleven countries in a corridor stretching from Greece to the Nordic countries was assessed, and conditions in the countries that appear to be barriers to achieving the EC’s goals were identified. (Barriers were defined as shortcomings in conditions that would facilitate the implementation of requirements presumed by the EC to lead to seamless international freight transport (“implementation conditions”)). The primary data source for the analysis was a set of interviews with the major actors and stakeholders associated with each country’s rail freight system. The (qualitative) information from the interviews was translated into numeric scores, which were...
Work conducted within REORIENT, a Sixth Framework project for the European Commission (EC), is described. One objective of REORIENT was to explain the status of transformation of the European railway sector into a functionally integrated, liberalized, interoperable system. The status of...
Warren E. Walker, Gerrit Baarse, Andre van Velzen, Tuuli Järvi -
This article examines whether the European Commission succeeded in reducing the negative socio-environmental externalities of road transport in Northern, Central and South-eastern Europe by introducing the First Infrastructure Package and Interoperability Directive that opened rail freight markets to competition. Using results from the EC-sponsored REORIENT project, the article searches for causal links between the completeness of legislative adherence and the occurrence of market rivalry. In so doing, it draws on the New Public Management (NPM) theorem which provided conceptual underpinnings for liberalisation policy and the notion of path-dependency warning that effectiveness of any public policy is contingent on the features of its implementation context. The article contrasts the adoption of rail deregulation directives by the old and rich EU-states in the Nordic region with the newly liberated, more recent EU-members in Central and South-eastern Europe in order to expose how the political, economic and cultural features of these countries affected the quality of legislative compliance and market rivalry. This method unearthed a clearly polarised picture of inter-country compliance and competition pattern. Norway, Sweden and Finland exhibit high levels of legal adherence without however, much intra-rail competition. Cut-off from the government subsidies, these countries’ state railways compete today with road operators, without however facing much rivalry from truckers. On the other hand, the new EU-members still lag on legislative conformance, but their licensing authorities granted operating permits to quite many private entrants. These carriers compete fiercely with the national incumbents, but the rail service quality they provide does not as yet threaten the dominance of truck in national freight transport. As a result, no inter-modal competition exists there. These findings indicate that liberalisation of rail freight market has not as yet reduced the road-rail imbalance in European freight markets nor curbed the negative socio-environmental externalities associated with motorised transport. Methodologically, this article exposed the analytical shortcoming of the NPM theorem and the strong empirical relevance of the path-dependency hypothesis.
This article examines whether the European Commission succeeded in reducing the negative socio-environmental externalities of road transport in Northern, Central and South-eastern Europe by introducing the First Infrastructure Package and Interoperability Directive that opened rail freight markets to competition. Using results from the EC-sponsored REORIENT project, the article searches for causal links between the completeness of legislative adherence and the occurrence of market rivalry. In so doing, it draws on the New Public Management (NPM) theorem which provided conceptual underpinnings for liberalisation policy and the notion of path-dependency warning that effectiveness of any public policy is contingent on the features of its implementation context. The article contrasts the adoption of rail deregulation directives by the old and rich EU-states in the Nordic region with the newly liberated, more recent EU-members in Central and South-eastern Europe in order to expose how...
This article examines whether the European Commission succeeded in reducing the negative socio-environmental externalities of road transport in Northern, Central and South-eastern Europe by introducing the First Infrastructure Package and Interoperability Directive that opened rail freight...
Johanna Ludvigsen, Oddgeir Osland -
Drawing on the features of political and economic transformation in Central and South-eastern Europe, this article explores how the First Infrastructure Package which in 2001 liberalised rail freight markets in Europe affected the process of legislative compliance and market dynamics in the new EU-members. The article focuses on how these countries governments’ safeguarding of economic welfare of national voters hindered rail market opening and distorted the level of playing ground for competition between the incumbents and the new entrants. To understand the public administrators’ behaviours, the study looks into in the economic woes of the newly liberated countries which imposed considerable political pressures on the national governments. Opening of rail markets to competition magnified these problems because national incumbents did not know how to compete and earn market profits. Large financial losses that they incurred as a consequence of rail market contestability have seriously threatened the means of subsistence for many railway workers. Thus, the governments stepped in to subsidise the incumbents’ employment and service continuity. These developments reveal conflict between the national priorities and the European Commission’s desire for intra-rail and inter-modal competition. Yet, the results also indicate that despite unequal playing ground, private rail operators in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania learned how to compete and accumulate working capital for expansion into the truck-served freight segment. Besides, the growth in markets captured by new entrants was not deterred by infrastructure fees which are among highest in Europe, the discrimination in access to rail terminals and an official favouritism towards incumbents. The explanations are rooted in socio-political transformation which created unique opportunities for entry into the rail freight sector and unleashed entrepreneurial dynamism. In order to minimise incompatibility between the national and the European interests, the article concluded that the European development funds, which the new member states receive should be channelled to remove the discriminatory praxis, dismantle the national railway monopolies, and build consensus between the national and the European prerogatives.
Drawing on the features of political and economic transformation in Central and South-eastern Europe, this article explores how the First Infrastructure Package which in 2001 liberalised rail freight markets in Europe affected the process of legislative compliance and market dynamics in the new EU-members. The article focuses on how these countries governments’ safeguarding of economic welfare of national voters hindered rail market opening and distorted the level of playing ground for competition between the incumbents and the new entrants. To understand the public administrators’ behaviours, the study looks into in the economic woes of the newly liberated countries which imposed considerable political pressures on the national governments. Opening of rail markets to competition magnified these problems because national incumbents did not know how to compete and earn market profits. Large financial losses that they incurred as a consequence of rail market contestability have...
Drawing on the features of political and economic transformation in Central and South-eastern Europe, this article explores how the First Infrastructure Package which in 2001 liberalised rail freight markets in Europe affected the process of legislative compliance and market dynamics in the...
Johanna Ludvigsen -
Intermodal rail freight service, in the form of semi-trailers and containers carried by rail in coordination with connecting road and water transport operators, emerged in North America on a few railways during the 1920s and 1930s. Experience gained from these early ventures inspired widespread introduction of intermodal service offerings after 1950. Between 1990 and 2005, rail intermodal traffic grew 87.7 percent, from 6.2 million to 11.7 containers and trailers, and now holds a significant position in the aggregate traffic base of the major North American rail freight carriers. Previous research and other sources of data and information are drawn upon to identify key drivers of this growth within the context of a conceptual model. The driving forces include changes in transport providers’ business policies and practices, government deregulation of pricing and other commercial actions by firms in rail and competing modes of transport, advancements in rail intermodal technology, and changes in supply chain management processes by shippers and consignees that have intensified demand for freight service of higher quality and lower cost. Comments on transferability to Europe of lessons learned from intermodal business experience in North America are provided in the concluding section.
Intermodal rail freight service, in the form of semi-trailers and containers carried by rail in coordination with connecting road and water transport operators, emerged in North America on a few railways during the 1920s and 1930s. Experience gained from these early ventures inspired widespread introduction of intermodal service offerings after 1950. Between 1990 and 2005, rail intermodal traffic grew 87.7 percent, from 6.2 million to 11.7 containers and trailers, and now holds a significant position in the aggregate traffic base of the major North American rail freight carriers. Previous research and other sources of data and information are drawn upon to identify key drivers of this growth within the context of a conceptual model. The driving forces include changes in transport providers’ business policies and practices, government deregulation of pricing and other commercial actions by firms in rail and competing modes of transport, advancements in rail intermodal...
Intermodal rail freight service, in the form of semi-trailers and containers carried by rail in coordination with connecting road and water transport operators, emerged in North America on a few railways during the 1920s and 1930s. Experience gained from these early ventures inspired...
John C. Spychalski, Evelyn Thomchick