Statement of intent: shift traffic to the railways

Berlin. The Pro-Rail Alliance has welcomed plans to shift as much freight onto the railways as possible in the future, as set out by transport minister Peter Ramsauer (CSU) in his paper ‘Action Plan for Freight Transport’. However, this contrasts starkly with the fact that the aim of shifting freight to rail, one of the six declared goals of an earlier version of the Master Plan for Freight Transport, was deleted from the original paper and no longer appears as one of the five core aims of the new action plan, according to the managing director of the Pro-Rail Alliance, Dirk Flege, on Monday in Berlin. “The action plan is contradictory.”

An example of just how far the action plan’s underlying intentions are removed from concrete measure can be seen from Measure 4c, said Flege: “At the point where it specifically discusses reducing freight transport sector emissions, there is absolutely no mention in the action plan of measures to shift freight transport to the environmentally friendly railways.” Moreover, the paper is still lacking any quantifiable goals on shifting freight. “Whereas a year ago, minister Ramsauer’s intention was to get all growth in freight transport onto the railways, today he is only talking about as large a share as possible,” said Flege. “This is not what I would call a well thought out policy for getting freight off the roads,” added Flege, who cited Switzerland as a good example.

The managing director of the Pro-Rail Alliance said he was relieved that the planned nation-wide trials of longer, heavier vehicles had now been reduced to one regional trial. “After the no vote by the majority of state transport ministers, this climb-down was a political necessity,” said Flege. The question remains as to why the federal government is still involved in this trial agreement. Trials under such laboratory conditions are not going to deliver any new results. “The fact that mega trucks are damaging to the environment because they take freight off the trains and onto the roads has already been demonstrated by different long-term studies,” said Flege.