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Europe’s train companies failing the normal commuter?

October 28, 2007 · 3 Comments

By Nicholas Newman 26 October 2007 

 It has taken since 1994 for Britain to complete the long promised high speed rail line linking London’s Saint Pancras station with the Channel Tunnel. On 14 November London will be directly connected to the rest of Europe’s by a high speed rail network. No doubt it will be another 20 years before Britain considers building a high speed rail network to link London with the rest of the British Isles.

Instead, passengers in the rest of Britain will be lucky to experience speeds little better than in the steam age. It will also mean that President Mitterrand’s taunt in 1994 about Britain’s failure to build a connecting high speed line; ready to connect London to the Channel Tunnel will no longer be true.

Eurostar’s move to St. Pancras from Waterloo means that, no longer, will French passengers feel uncomfortable arriving at a station named after Napoleon’s greatest defeat. 

Elsewhere, Europe is steadily expanding its network. In Spain and France new high speed lines are being planned, or in the process of construction. Even if some schemes are being delayed due to funding and building problems, as European train makers are now the world’s premier producers of these advanced trains. 

‘French rail is the Holy Grail. Fantastic trains, great discounts, superb coverage etc,’ says inveterate Irish train enthusiast Kevin Byrne.  ‘But the glamour of these shinny new trains, often means little to Europe’s hard pressed rail commuters on their way to work in Barcelona or London,‘ comments Hans Rat, International Association of for Public Transport.  

Commuters across Europe complain about their train services. London commuters about late trains, in Paris French rail unions strike against government railway reforms and in Barcelona both regional and local trains are being plunged into chaos due to construction accidents on the new adjoining AVE line being built into the heart of the Spain’s second city.  

Britain’s hard pressed commuters complain about some of the highest fares in Europe, and France’s SNCF & Spain’s RENFE provincial passengers, are angry that services are being cut back as many hard pressed regional governments can no longer afford to pay the massive subsidies necessary to keep services running.  

Often, ironically, it is British rail enthusiasts who are leading the political campaigns to maintain and reopen services operating in both Spain and France, notable examples of this being the fight to reopen the Majorcan rail network and the service linking Grasse with Nice in Provence. 

To make matters worse for those regions without high speed lines, much of the rural network outside major cities is deteriorating. In recent months train services in both rural Spain and France have been cancelled without warning as the respective national track authorities have made emergency repairs, with services replaced by buses. 

Professor Robert Rivier of Ecole Polytechnic Lausanne in his recent report to the French government observed: ‘In Britain the policy is to spend £140,000 per kilometer on track maintenance and renewal compared to France and Spain where spending is around £35,000 per kilometer, which has resulted in numerous rural lines suffering derailments and speed restrictions.’  

The blame for this short sighted maintenance policy has been the focus, by many EU’s politicians, on potentially vote winning glossy trans-European projects such as TGV and AVE services being brought to their region. After all, Spain’s first AVE line linking Madrid with Seville, got priority over other AVE planned schemes with stronger business cases, because it was the home town of the then Spanish Prime Minister.

Unfortunately, for him, he lost the subsequent national elections. The trouble is both the AVE and TGV have been the result of their respective governments efforts to achieve unquestionable technological success. Of the 352 billion passenger-kilometers performed by railways in the EU in 2004, high-speed rail accounted for over a fifth of the total, at over 76 billion passenger kilometers. But the difficulty is such investment has been at the expense of regional and suburban rail services in these countries. European Parliament Rapporteur Dirk Sterkx argues that: ‘ordinary rail passengers have been left out in the cold by hefty investment in high speed rail services.

‘ Despite lacking such an extensive high speed rail network as compared to France or Spain, Britain has notes Eurostat (EU Statistical Agency) 2007: ‘led Europe in terms of growth in the numbers of rail passengers, leaving both these countries behind.’ It could be argued that Britain’s more balanced rail investment policy that focuses on suburban and regional services, rather than the glamorous new high speed services is serving both rail passengers and tax payers better than its counterparts in France or Spain. 

Though France has always prided itself on being the leader of Europe’s railways, for all the British Eurostar’s and RENFE AVE’s are based on French TGV technology. As Tony Berkeley Chair Rail Freight Group observes: ‘Britain has learnt from its mistakes in transforming its railways into a competitive, liberalised, transparent but regulated market in passenger and freight services. This has led to a 40% growth in passenger services and a 60% growth in rail freight over ten years, much greater than that achieved in other member states. These figures still remain un-equalled in the rest of the EU!’ Both SNCF and RENFE are facing tightening budgets and massive debts; this has forced them to adopt an Anglo Saxon business culture that actually serves ordinary customers’ needs. 

 ‘However, the unions do have a tendency to strike just when I need my train to be running,’ notes Kevin Byrne. In fact it is sad to see the chiefs of Europe’s rail unions using the language of the class struggle to resist the so necessary reforms that are needed to ensure that Europe’s railways face a prosperous and sustainable future. For if Europe’s governments do not adapt, many see a pessimistic future of Europe’s rail industry.

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Categories: CHILTERN RAILWAYS · European Studies Centre · European Union · Eurostar · London · Rail · european transport policy

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