Rail transport is facing many challenges this year - declining volumes and uncompetitive prices, especially compared to road transport. According to Czech carriers, about 1 million tonnes of freight are shifted from rail to road every year, and they point out that rail freight prices are on average one third higher than road prices.
It is now difficult for railway companies to win new contracts. One way is to offer customers more complex logistics solutions, such as backloading, or to show all the possible benefits of rail logistics, i.e. even if the customers pays extra for the basic route, they can save money in internal processes through flexible loading or storage of goods in wagons.
In this context, rail operators could be helped by the expected rise in the price of emission allowances, which could increase the price of road transport in the future.
However, even if rail freight volumes could be increased, there is still the problem of staff shortages. For example, there are still very few locomotive drivers on the market and it takes several years to train new people.
Another possibility is for the state to intervene to ensure that some environmentally damaging goods (such as waste in Austria) can only be transported over long distances by rail (read more).
In general, there is satisfaction with the functioning of the Czech railway infrastructure, e.g. the ad hoc allocation of train capacities works well and better than in e.g. Germany or Austria. Slovakian carriers have also complained about the poor state of the railway infrastructure and cargo transportation.
In the end, the Ministry of Transport, Railway Infrastructure and all the carriers agreed that it was necessary to point out the specific conditions of the Czech railway within the European Union. All of them together should have a strong voice in the most important technological decisions, such as the ETCS or DAC issues. And while there was a consensus among those present on ETCS, they described DAC as an insufficiently prepared project with a questionable impact.
