eu4journalists

Transport - Energy

3. Transport

Issues

• Growth of transit sector overall and air and road particularly
• 2001 White Paper European Transit Policy for 2010
• June 2006 mid-term review of White Paper
• 2007 Green Paper on Urban Transportation
• Effects of automobiles and city-planning
• Trans-European Networks
• Transport market liberalisation

The European Union has one of the most dynamic transit systems in the world. In 2006, 8.2 million people were employed in the transport sector, 64% of them in land transport. The European Environment Agency released a report entitled Transport and Environment: On the Way to a New Common Transport Policy in early 2007. The report says that between 1990 and 2003, the volume of people travelling within EEA countries grew by one-fifth overall, air transport having seen the highest growth at 96%. While this growth may be good for the EU economy, it has other, dramatic effects. Emissions from transport account for over one-fifth of greenhouse-gas emission in the EU-15, 93% of this from road transport. Almost half of transport subsidies pay for road transport, which exponentially increases the level of pollution. Similarly, while the largest growth sector was air-transport, this is also the area where emissions are growing fastest, with an increase of 86% between 1990 and 2004. As a consequence, EU citizens are exposed to large amounts of air-pollution, the EEA estimating that as many as four million life-years are lost each year from pollution and related health-care costs.

In 2001 a White Paper entitled European Transport Policy for 2010: Time to Decide was launched by the Commission, which proposed 60 measures for restructuring the EU's transport policy, with the intent of creating a more sustainable and less polluting and congested system. The White paper also included several suggestions for addressing these and other problems, including the “decoupling” of economic growth from transport growth to make transport more dynamic and less dependent on market factors. Too, the paper suggested a shift away from road transport by revitalising rail and water travel, tweaking the taxation system to reflect the actual cost of transport in terms of environmental damage, network congestion and accidents, and making the European transit system safer and more efficient in general.

The White Paper on Transport has resulted in several policy initiatives, including:

• A European Road Safety Action Programme enacting measures to create safer and more dynamic vehicles, improving overall road safety and with the goal of halving the number of road fatalities by 2010.
• Launching of the Marco Polo program to shift freight transport from congested European roads to rail and waterway transport, including guidelines for creating Trans-European Networks of the sea.
• Revision of Eurovignette directive for charging shipping vehicles to reflect the real cost of road shipment.
• Improving the TEN's for integration of the new member-states into the transportation network.
• Encouraging the liberalisation and harmonisation of Europe's railway systems.

In June 2006 the Commission issued a “Mid-Term Review” of the White Paper on Transport, with several, notable observations:

• The context of transport policy changed because of the accession of the EU-10 in 2004, the acceleration of the global economy and competition, the rise in oil prices, the enactment of the Kyoto Protocol and the advent of global terrorism.
• The “decoupling” of transport networks from economic factors was not mentioned in the review, and the phrase “intermodality” was suppressed in favour of a “modal shift,” to reflect the shift away from integration of different forms of transport to interconnectivity and, consequently, the hegemony of each transit-sector.
• Energy efficiency is stressed as a key strategy to improving transit.
• “Intelligent Transport Systems” that will improve the flow of transit.
• The need to launch a “Green Paper on Urban Transit” to tackle the same transit issues within cities.
• In identifying the “real cost” of transit, the Commission will include infrastructure expansion.

Reviews of the Commission's current plans are mixed, predictably according to how policy changes will reflect the development of one sector over another and, perhaps more relevant, the funding each sector will receive, with groups working in road development intent increasing road construction and groups working in the rail industry intent on further developing Europe's rail system.

In March of 2007, the Commission launched its Green Paper on Urban Transport, which will examine ways to address transit efficiency and congestion in Europe's urban areas. Although the paper will examine many aspects of urban transit, almost every issue on the Green Paper's agenda relates to the use of personal vehicles. Nearly half of Europeans own a car(s), and will likely continue to do so for reasons of comfort, status and convenience. To a great extent this behaviour is encouraged by the fact that consumers often do not pay the full price of operating their car when accounting for infrastructure maintenance and the urban and environmental impact of personal vehicles. Also, public policy is, for many reasons, focused on building roads and parking facilities, which arguably increases the number of cars on the road.

The Commission is keen to develop urban areas as part of its revised Lisbon Strategy and under the auspices of the 2007 Green Paper, with much focus on methods to make European cities more attractive places to live, work and invest. Indeed, 75-85% of the EU's GDP is generated in cities. But while cities contribute the bulk of EU funding, they are experiencing increasing problems with pollution, noise, congestion and accidents, all a result of 75% of metropolitan travel being undertaken in cars. Congestion in London is said to be worse than in the “days of horse-and-cart travel” and EU wide, it is estimated that the cost of traffic congestion consumes up to 1% of annual GDP, along with increased fuel-use, air and noise pollution and aggressive behaviour. With increasing populations and thus increased car use, rising oil prices and instability in oil-supplying countries, and direct links between cars and the EU's environmental and energy initiatives, including emission caps, the development of biofuels and road congestion, the EU faces many potential problems with automobiles.

The Commission has several strategies to deal with this, including the 2001 Biofuels Directive, which was reinforced by the 2007 Spring Summit, and plans for more fuel-efficient and green-powered vehicles; a proposal for “green propulsion” is expected to be presented in 2009. Many of the problems with urban transit are related to the way cities are planned in general, especially as land becomes scarce while cities are expanding at unprecedented rates. The CIVITAS and STEER initiatives are organised to provide support and funding for sustainable transport, with proposals to dissuade car use through the removal of parking spaces, the pedestrianisation of city-centres, higher parking rates and tolls for car entry into congested parts of the city. Half of all road trips are 5 km or less, and so bicycling and walking are encouraged by the construction of special lanes and paths.

According to many environmental and urban design experts, perhaps one of the greatest problems with urban transit is the decentralisation of urban areas, resulting in “urban sprawl” similar to that seen many other parts of the world. The further low-density areas are from the city-centres and the more of them there are, the more difficult and costly it is to maintain urban infrastructure to them. To solve this, a good balance needs to be created between liberalisation of the transport sector, municipal regulation and effective planning of land-use in the greenfield (rural or suburban) and brownfield (urban) areas.

TENs

There are many projects under the aegis of the TEN programme, including the Lyon-Turin rail link, which involves an expensive, low-altitude tunnel under the Alps, the “Motorways of the Seas” programme, and a series of axial connections with the EU's new neighbours to the East. This, along with a large number of other rail and road construction projects, aims to create a unified, Trans-European Transit Network (TEN-T).

Another, overarching TEN project is GALILEO, Europe’s own satellite navigation system, launched by the EU and the European Space Agency. Based on a constellation of 30 satellites, this system will provide more advanced features than the existing GPS (American) and GLONASS (Russian) military-developed systems. The basic signal will be available to all (and not be encrypted for military use), and provide accuracy to within one metre. The first test satellite was launched in December 2005, but it will be several years before the full system is up and running.

Currently, Air Traffic Control (ATC) is largely organised by national boundaries, meaning that aircraft often pass through several zones. As such, air traffic is channelled into corridors through which planes rarely take the straight route to their destination. The Single European Sky initiative, organised in conjunction with the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, seeks to harmonise ATC, making more flexible use of airspace in order to increase overall capacity, reduce flight delays, and make flying safer.

Liberalisation

The fundamental principle of the single market is that any operator licensed to provide services in one member-state is automatically able to do so in others. This means that governments cannot discriminate against operators from outside their own country or restrict private operations on the basis of nationality. There are, however, many technical barriers to transit providers.

In shipping on roads and on water, harmonisation has been relatively simple, with the focus being on size/weight standardisation and on administrative simplification, including the standardisation of documents that must accompany each cargo (or passenger load) across Europe. Safety has also been of concern, with the standardised EU format driving licence making it easier to prohibit dangerous drivers and limits on permissible coach and truck driving hours. In air transport, too, market-liberalisation has brought huge changes. In the past, all international air travel was the subject of detailed agreements between governments. But liberalisation has made it possible for any licensed carrier that could obtain ‘slots’ at airports can operate services between any two points in the EU, giving rise to the ‘no-frills’ and ‘low-cost’ airlines that criss-cross Europe.

Rail services have been the most difficult area to liberalise because infrastructure and technical standards are more complex and vary significantly between member-states. Apart from a few high-speed passenger trains, cross-border trains are generally required to change locomotives and crews at each border, meaning delays and higher costs. Rail-shipment is made less competitive with trucks because of this.

To create rail competition, the EU chose to separate rail infrastructure from rail services, although the success of this initiative has varied between member-states. The actual ability of service providers to take advantage of these provisions depends on the willingness of the countries concerned to facilitate them. Training of crews and certification for equipment can represent a major barrier to market access. It has taken years, for example, for France and Germany to cross-certify their respective high-speed trains for operation on the Paris-Frankfurt line due to open in 2007. International freight services are about to be fully opened, with passenger services expected to follow in 2010.