The case of «Ras­tatt» and what we can learn from it

Since 12 Au­gust 2017, the Rhein­tal rail­way line in Ras­tatt near Karl­sruhe has been dis­rupted. Fol­low­ing an ac­ci­dent dur­ing the con­struc­tion of a tun­nel, the over­ly­ing rail­road tracks started to sink. So, with one minor blow, the rail­way on the north-south axis was im­pass­able for an in­def­i­nite pe­riod of time. While di­ver­sions and re­place­ment ca­pac­i­ties were quickly pro­vided for pas­sen­ger trans­ports, goods trans­ports are still strug­gling to get by, even one month after the in­ci­dent.

Nor­mally, about 200 freight trains a day use the af­fected part of this rail­way. They con­nect the big sea­ports in Bel­gium and the Nether­lands with Italy and pro­vide the local econ­omy with means of pro­duc­tion. The dis­rup­tion stops about 45 per­cent of the en­tire freight trans­port on the north-south axis. Only 16 per­cent of the usual vol­ume have been trans­ported by rail­road dur­ing the first few weeks. Al­ter­na­tive routes going through Stuttgart-Sin­gen, France or the Bren­ner-pass have only been put into op­er­a­tion slowly, as in­ter­na­tional co­or­di­na­tion was very weak. The rules of op­er­a­tion in Ger­many, France, Aus­tria and Switzer­land are not co­or­di­nated enough and se­ri­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion bar­ri­ers pre­vail in some areas. More­over, there are still bot­tle­necks with rail­way op­er­a­tors: There is a lack of lo­co­mo­tives and, most of all, of train dri­vers that could op­er­ate on al­ter­nate routes. Mean­while, the re­pair of the dam­aged tracks is being de­layed more and more - ac­cord­ing to the in­fra­struc­ture op­er­a­tor DB Netz AG, the dis­rup­tion will be solved only by 2 Oc­to­ber of this year.

What re­mains is a big eco­nomic dam­age- prob­a­bly run­ning into bil­lions. But even worse is the long-term image loss that the rail freight trans­port sec­tor and the model of trans­fer pol­icy from road to rail are suf­fer­ing from. It goes to show: The over­all sys­tem is highly vul­ner­a­ble - fore­most be­cause the coun­tries con­cerned lack the will­ing­ness to align their poli­cies in the in­ter­est of the en­tire cor­ri­dor. Nev­er­the­less, there is also a rea­son for con­fi­dence: Pro­cess­ing the case « Ras­tatt » cre­ates an op­por­tu­nity to tackle the prob­lems that have sur­faced. This is es­pe­cially the case on the Eu­ro­pean level. The EU should re­think the sys­tem of freight trans­port cor­ri­dors to­gether with the mem­ber states. The pre­sent con­struct and the di­vi­sion of re­spon­si­bil­ity do not meet the re­quire­ments - there is dire need for a com­mon, op­er­a­tionally ef­fec­tive cor­ri­dor man­age­ment. Fur­ther­more, ro­bust emer­gency sce­nar­ios must be avail­able, which can be put into prac­tice co­op­er­a­tively by all in­volved states. It is, how­ever, also im­por­tant to cre­ate the nec­es­sary pre­con­di­tions for a bet­ter co­ex­is­tence of freight and pas­sen­ger trans­ports on the na­tional lev­els. This is es­sen­tial if the rail­road should stay an at­trac­tive car­rier for freight trans­port.