Poland’s accession to the European Union on May 1, 2004, had significant and far-reaching consequences for the transport industry. The European Community, as part of a common, uniform transport policy, implemented very deep liberalization and deregulation changes in the transport market, the effects of which we are also observing in Poland.
The primary goal of the transport policy was defined as creating the foundations for a single transport market and its sustainable, long-term development. This market should be characterized by maintaining a balance: economic, social, and ecological.
In practice, this means, among other things, attempting to shift demand growth from road transport to:
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rail transport
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short-sea shipping
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inland waterway transport
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promoting multimodal transport.
Transport structure
However, there is no shortage of voices claiming that the actions and measures intended to implement these assumptions are ineffective and do not bring the expected results. This can be evidenced by the data contained in Table 1. Over the course of 13 years, we have seen a continuous increase in the share of road transport in carriage, while, with some minor fluctuations, the share of rail transport and inland waterway transport has been falling.
Let us therefore look at whether these trends are reflected in the structure of transport in the Polish market (Table 2). As the comparison shows, the dynamics of these changes are even more visible in Poland. We are dealing with a quite dramatic decline in the share of rail transport, although its position relative to the average of the 25 EU countries is still significant, which is mainly due to the structure of goods transported in Poland. Coal still accounts for 50% of the tonnage and 30% of the transport work in Polish rail transport. Furthermore, rail transport in Poland has no competitor in the form of inland waterway transport.
Rail transport
The problems of the Polish railway sector are well known, especially regarding underinvested line infrastructure, which is sometimes in a catastrophic state, and an insufficient number of modernly equipped stations and terminals. When presenting the situation of this branch of transport, it is also necessary to draw attention to several other issues. These include, in particular:
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progress in the liberalization of the Polish rail market
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development and effects of competition
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very low share in the transport of non-bulk goods
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limited financial and organizational capabilities of carriers operating in Poland
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ownership changes taking place in the Polish railway sector.
Conditions for the liberalization and deregulation of the Polish rail market, following relevant EU acts, were created by: the Act of June 27, 1997, on Rail Transport and the Act of September 8, 2000, on the Restructuring, Privatization, and Commercialization of Polskie Koleje Państwowe (at that time, among others, PKP CARGO SA and Polskie Linie Kolejowe SA – PLK SA were established). The Office of Rail Transport (UTK), the market regulator, was established under the Act of March 28, 2003, on Rail Transport.
Regarding the creation of conditions enabling access to the rail network of member states for carriers from other EU countries (in accordance with Directive 91/440/EEC of the Council of July 29, 1991, on the development of the Community’s railways), Poland negotiated a transitional period when joining the European Union. From January 1, 2007, the Polish market was fully opened for international freight transport, and from January 1, 2008, it was opened for cabotage freight transport.
The liberalization processes taking place in the Polish railway sector should be assessed positively. By the end of 2008, the UTK had already issued 101 licenses for conducting various types of rail transport activities. Poland is undoubtedly at the forefront of EU countries in terms of creating a competitive rail transport market. This can be evidenced, among other things, by the IBM Rail Liberalisation Index – in which Poland was ranked 8th out of 27 countries in 2007.
Private freight operators began operating on the Polish market in 1998. However, there is no shortage of opinions that competition in rail transport, sometimes quite fierce, does not generate new demand. Carriers are fighting for the same pool of freight, or in other words, they are taking cargo away from PKP CARGO SA (Table 3). If there were increases in transport in some years, it was not thanks to competition and better quality services, but thanks to the general growth in demand, i.e., the good economic situation of the country. Examples include increased demand for aggregate transport or growing fuel consumption.
Unfortunately, competition for obtaining cargo mainly concerns block trains, i.e., full-train transport of bulk goods. On the other hand, rail carriers, including private ones, are not very interested in distributed transport, in single wagons and groups of wagons, because only block trains are reasonably profitable, especially those carried out over short distances, such as coal transport from mines to power plants and combined heat and power plants. Distributed transport, however, requires costly shunting and marshalling operations, and delivery times for goods are also extended. It can be assumed that this is the main reason for the very low share of non-bulk goods in rail transport.
The manager of existing marshalling yards in Poland for handling distributed traffic, where trains are formed and unformed, is PKP CARGO SA, which bears the costs of shunting and traction work as well as infrastructure maintenance. These stations should eventually pass to PLK SA, but then the manager would need to have their own locomotives to handle wagons at the stations.
The limited financial capabilities of carriers are felt, among other things, by the lack of funds for costly railway investments. The financial situation of carriers also depends to some extent on the level of fees for using rail infrastructure (this remained at the discretion of individual EU member states). In countries where governments lack funds to finance rail infrastructure, access charges tend to rise rapidly. The raising of prices for the use of rail infrastructure by PLK SA, in turn, provokes protests from rail carriers, reducing the profitability of their operations.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 1/2010.