Tadeus Shozda: "Competition appears where conditions are equal"

16.08.2010 (17:26)

The 38th Session of OSJD Ministers Meeting took place in Prague in June. Here we talk about its results with Tadeus Shozda, Chairman of OSJD Executive Committee.

- How do you assess the overall results of the last session? Are you satisfied with the work done?

- This session became a landmark in the Organization for Cooperation of Railways. The report says (data can be found in the OSJD Railway Transport Bulletin and on the OSJD web-site www.osjd.org) that 2009 became a serious challenge for us due to the global economic crisis. The traffic declined, and implementation of many projects was slowed down.

However, the session emphasised that the joint efforts of transport and railways ministries of the OSJD member countries stabilized the situation and pursued the positive development of railway transport.

A good example was China, where last year 5,481 kilometres of new railway lines and 4,063 kilometres of second tracks were built, 5,557 kilometres of new lines (including 2,319 kilometres for passenger trains) were commissioned, and 8,448 kilometres of tracks were electrified. High-speed traffic is launched on the 1,068 kilometres line between Wuhan and Guangzhou, where passenger trains run at a spped of 350 kph. A mass production has been started of six-axle electric power 7,2 kWt electric locomotivess and eight-axle (9,600 kWt) diesel engines with the capacity of 6,000 h.p.

Russia continues high-speed passenger traffic projects between Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod and in the area between St Petersburg and Buslovskaya, which reduces travel time en route from St Petersburg to Helsinki from 5 hours 50 minutes to 3 hours and 30 minutes.

In 2009, Polish State Railways continued modernization of railway lines and infrastructure. A particular attention was paid to the reconstruction of the Warsaw railway junction on the crossroad of three pan-European transport corridors and two OSJD corridors.

Gustav Slamecka, Minister of Transport of the Czech Republic said in his speech that much work has been done for the construction and modernization of infrastructure, especially on the routes of international transport corridors. Rolling stock is also being modernised and renewed. And there are a many such examples in the OSJD member countries.

- The traffic volume between the countries of Western and Eastern Europe is constantly growing, therefore the most pressing issues now is to make traffic faster at border crossings. Have you managed to solve this problem?

- Simplification of procedures at border crossings on international railway transport routes has long been the OSJD's focus of attention. This question is included in the agenda of the Commission for Transport Policy and Development Strategy. We have managed to achieve some success in this area.

Thus, the OSJD member countries provide control over the strict observance of the established time for checking passenger trains at border stations. Necessary measures to remove causes of the delays are taken in cases of longer check time, and bordering parties promptly receive relevant information.

Also, the leading executive organisation from the Czech Republic has drafted a structure for a compendium of practical experience to simplify border crossings. It outlines the main sections, which will be made to generalize the positive experience in this field, and examples will be given of effective solutions to problems. They can be used in the practice of OSJD member countries at border crossings.

Preparation and approval procedures are currently on regarding the draft of Annex 9 to “Facilitation of Border Crossing in International Railway Transport” to the International Convention on the Harmonization of Frontier Controls of Goods (1982). 

A Working Group considered the revised text of the draft and forwarded it for approval to the Administrative Committee of the Convention (AK.3), where it was agreed.

Removing barriers for goods and passengers was facilitated by a number of OSJD member countries entering the EU in 2004 and 2007 and by the creating the Customs Union between Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia this year. This also considerably reduces time of passage through the border and ultimately the total run time of international rail traffic.

- You have repeatedly pointed out that due to lack of balanced tariff policy, railway loses to road, river, and in some areas to sea transport. Do you think OSJD can improve this situation? And what should be done to raise the competitiveness of railway transport? Is it maybe necessary to create equal competitive conditions for road and rail transport, as in the Czech Republic, and to introduce, for example, a highway fee for heavy trucks, which, by the way, pollute the environment?

- Of course, the experience of the EU and the CR shows that, first of all, this is done through the creation of equal competitive conditions for road and rail transport. Progress in this direction is confirmed both by setting fees for the use of roads (such as toll collection) and facilitating container and trailer traffic, and also by opening logistics centres. "Environmental Map" may also play an important role, since railway is the most environmentally friendly transport, which allows to avoid traffic jams.

In general, the importance of the issue to increase the competitiveness of railway transport between Europe and Asia is growing. It is no secret that the current volume of freight from China to Europe by rail is only about 1%, and almost everything else is sea transport. This is despite the fact that the test runs showed that delivery by rail from China to Germany in container trains can be twice faster than by sea.

Here railways must compete for freight traffic from the central and western regions of China, which could go to the west by rail instead of going first to the Chinese eastern ports by road and then by sea, bypassing the Eurasian continent.

A new industrial centre is being organised in the west of China near the border with Kazakhstan with investments amounting to not less than $ 215 billion. It is located to the southeast of the provincial capital of Urumqi in Yuininge, which has recently been directly connected to the line with the Chinese railway network. Kazakhstan Railway has started building a second rail crossing on the border between China and Kazakhstan. Rapid economic development in western regions of China, which are several thousand kilometres away from ports, creates new demands and challenges for transport operators, especially railways.

- The number of privately owned monopolies or subsidiaries is growing in the CIS and Europe. This process is especially fast in Russia and Poland. It is becoming clear that OSJD has to cooperate with them in order to keep it effective. Is it possible?

- The situation on railway transport market has changed very much. It is shown on examples of Russia (where new companies such as PGK and FPK were created recently, and soon Second Cargo Company will be started) and Poland (PKP Cargo, PKP Intercity, Kolei Mazowiecki, etc.). It requires new approaches to solve problems in the organization of international transport, which includes the review of such issues as the liability of carriers, their participation in international agreements (SMPS, SMGS and others), the right to vote (each country's interests are currently represented by only one railway company entitled to vote), etc.

Therefore, there are such forms of participation established in OSJD as Supervisors - Ministries or Railways (there are only six of those at the moment) and Associated Enterprises - for companies and organizations directly involved in railway transport (currently their number is more than 30). Among Russian companies which became OSJD Associated Enterprises, there are The First Cargo Company, Neftehimtrans, TransTeleCom and others. These companies and supervisors are actively involved in the development and revision of technical documentation, carried out in the framework of the OSJD Commission For Freight and Passenger Transport Infrastructure and Rolling Stock and Permanent Working Group for Coordination and Information Technology, Financial and Payment Issues.

We hope that implementation of joint projects and activities will promote further development of railway transport in the Eurasian continent, increasing its competitiveness, reducing run time and costs, which will ultimately reduce transport costs in prices of goods.

Interviewed by Oleg Dyachenko

The whole version of the interview is in RZD-Partner #16