International cooperation
Under the leadership of the Thuringian Ministry of Infrastructure and Agriculture, a 12-party project consortium – which includes besides other partners from Austria, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy our company Rail Cargo Hungaria as well – was formed to successfully participate in the Interreg Central Europe Programme Directorate's tender for the development of the Central European freight transport network, and thus to start project implementation from 1 February 2023.
The focus of the three-year project is on improving the accessibility of the main transport corridors, advancing regional development and promoting green transport in rural and peripheral regions.
In order to reduce CO2 emissions, more goods should be transported by rail. Currently, however, most goods in Central Europe are still transported by means of road transport, especially as deficiencies in the railway infrastructure affect the competitiveness of rail. Rail4Regions project supports transport planners in integrating regional railway lines into European freight transport networks. The partners develop solutions for the optimisation of regional railway lines and junctions and develop action plans to promote the application of their proposals in regional development programmes.
Three years, three work packages
Nowadays, the transport distances to the nearest rail freight junctions are too long for most companies, and consequently many goods that would actually be suitable for transport by rail are forwarded by road. For this reason, Rail4Regions partners will work together during the three years of cooperation on solutions for transport and spatial planners to integrate regional rail routes into freight transport. Improving access to and the economic feasibility of rail freight transport contributes to the implementation of the European Green Deal objectives in the transport segment.
While previous analyses provide sufficient information on the general state of rail freight and its bottlenecks that hinder the substantial shift of freight transport to rail, little is known about the individual cases and consequently how spatial developers and transport planners could act at the local and regional level. The aim of the first action within the project is therefore to collect individual cases at the micro level (isolated industrial sites) using common approaches. These will be jointly processed and analysed to produce the White Paper on accessibility of freight transport in rural areas.
The task of the next project phase is then to develop innovative solutions for increasing the capacity of regional railway infrastructure and loading points. The aim is to raise awareness among the authorities and public institutions responsible for transport and spatial planning, as well as the owners and operators of railway infrastructure, for solutions to increase rail freight traffic in Central Europe. Within the framework of four transnational working groups working in parallel, the topics of accessibility of loading points, the issue of branch lines, the problem area of industrial tracks, and maintaining single-wagonload transport, respectively, are being addressed. On the latter topic, our company will be given an important leadership role: under Rail Cargo Hungaria’s leadership, the state support system for single-wagonload transport, or the other possibilities and approaches for promoting rail freight transport, will be presented – among other things through a short "film contribution".
The solutions developed by the working groups will be presented to the stakeholders in the third project phase in order to set up and implement pilot projects based on the jointly developed results and solutions. The project will be completed in 2026 within the framework of a large-scale international conference.