Scope:

The act under evaluation is Regulation 913/2010 concerning a European rail network for competitive freight (Rail Freight Corridor Regulation).

Evaluation findings:

The lack of good quality and quantity of rail infrastructure capacity for rail freight is the key problem addressed by the Regulation. The Regulation establishes rail freight corridors (11 in total) with each having its own governance and a one-stop shop for requesting access to rail infrastructure capacity. The Regulation introduced rules for selection, organisation, management and the indicative investment planning of these corridors.

While the goals pursued by the Regulation are still relevant, it did not produce the desired outcomes in full. There were improvements, but the tools of the Regulation, as implemented, did not make sufficient impact. The governance structure set out in the Regulation did not deliver as intended. At executive level, the Member States did not succeed in overcoming the prevailing focus on national approaches to managing international rail freight transport. At management level, rail infrastructure managers failed to reach out to buyers of rail freight services, such as combined transport operators, logistic service providers or shippers from industry. At operational level, the procedures introduced by the Regulation did not result in significant improvements of the volume of capacity made available to rail freight traffic or the quality of this capacity, measured by criteria such as speed or reliability. Implementation led to the deployment of an IT tool to coordinate traffic management and guidelines for cross-border coordination in the case of major international disruptions. However, these tools did not per se improve operational conditions but rather provided the ground for improvements, the latter not being implemented at large scale.

The objective to facilitate the use of rail infrastructure was achieved to a limited extent only. The tools intended to deliver the facilitation effect, such as the one-stop shops for requesting train paths, the IT applications for capacity allocation and traffic management and the documents providing information on the corridor infrastructure and its conditions of use, were implemented. However, these tools did not cover all the processes and interactions necessary to plan and operate international rail freight services. Their performance remained inferior to that of the equivalent national systems in terms of functionalities and completeness or accuracy of information.

In relation to simplification and burden reduction, the Regulation was supposed to produce benefits by facilitating requests for infrastructure capacities for international rail freight services by introducing a one-stop shop for each freight corridor. The facilitation effect was undermined by:

• the pre-arranged train paths offered by the one-stop shops not including the first/last sections from origins and to destinations, forcing applicants to contact individual infrastructure managers to construct a full train path for a large number of cases;

• one-stop shops not being competent for handling modifications of train paths after the allocation phase, which still need to be negotiated with the individual infrastructure managers concerned;

• complications occurring for sections belonging to several freight corridorsresulting in additional effort for the applicant;

• the perceived poor quality of the products offered by the one-stop shops;

• lack of integration of the IT tool (Path Coordination System) with other IT tools (of infrastructure managers and railway undertakings).

Estimated savings and benefits

While the Regulation included a one-stop shop as a way to simplify the process for applicants for the use of rail infrastructure capacity, this did not fully materialise.

The evaluation could not calculate the full costs for implementing the Regulation.

The evaluation collected information on the costs of the operational bodies set up by rail infrastructure managers to implement the Regulation, which arguably account for a major share of total implementation costs. The costs of these bodies are estimated at EUR 55 million for the period from 2011 to 2016, out of which 35 million were co-financed by the European Union. Part of these costs result from the duplication of structures and activities at the level of individual corridors and the consequent proliferation of meetings and unnecessarily complex decision-making processes and financial arrangements. In practice, some of these activities have been carried out at network level, jointly for all corridors, which is more efficient. The Regulation does however not require such practices as it does not define a network layer for governance and measures.

Despite these inefficiencies, the evaluation concluded that the costs for implementation were not excessive. The shortcomings identified will be addressed in the upcoming revision of the initiative.

Which objective(s) does the Commission pursue?

• The initiative will address the shortcomings identified in the evaluation of Regulation (EU) 913/2010, which concluded that the legal framework is insufficient to address the key problem of poor performance of cross-border rail freight resulting from deficiencies of the rail infrastructure capacity for freight. The initiative will focus on addressing the shortcomings of the legal framework and ensure that EU acquis responds to the needs of increasing the volume and the quality of performance of cross-border rail traffic. The initiative will take into account developments in the rail sector and in particular the latest relevant initiatives, such as the Timetable Redesign Project.