In Europe, transport is the only sector where energy consumption and CO2 emissions are increasing. The European Environment Agency (EEA) has estimated that, under current trends, emissions in the transport sector by 2050 will be higher than the total emission reduction targets set for all transport sectors in Europe. At the 2009 Environment Council meeting, European environment ministers determined that it is necessary to set a target leading to a reduction in emission levels in the European Union, specifying an 80-95% emission reduction by 2050.
The main goal of EU transport policy is a sustainable development strategy defined as “the identification and development of Union actions to enable the achievement of continuous improvement in the quality of life for current and future generations, by creating communities capable of managing and using resources efficiently and tapping into the ecological and social innovative potential of the economy, ensuring prosperity and social cohesion.”
Since the beginning of the 1990s, many unfavorable phenomena have been observed in Polish rail transport. These include, among others:
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distortion of the intermodal structure – since 1990, there has been an approximately 180% increase in transport work performed by road transport and an approximately 40% decrease in transport work in rail transport,
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insufficient share of GDP in expenditure on modernization and development investments – according to EU standards, this share should be at the level of 1-1.5%, while in Poland it was lower than 0.3%,
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lack of conditions for fair intermodal competition, as no mechanisms for the internalization of external transport costs have been introduced through the full implementation of the “polluter pays” principle.
If users do not pay the full social costs of transport, they are effectively subsidized, which causes a distortion of prices and costs in transport activities. The sectoral structure of external costs for freight and passenger transport in Poland is as follows: 97% – road transport, 3% – rail transport.
External costs, i.e., social costs, include: air, soil, and water pollution, noise, climate change, accidents, land use, landscape degradation, and time lost in traffic jams. In this respect, rail is indisputably the cheapest means of passenger transport, and in the field of freight transport, it is second only to water transport, which by its nature does not reach everywhere that tracks do. The external costs of passenger transport, calculated per 1,000 so-called passenger-kilometers (which means transporting 1,000 passengers over a distance of 1 km), are estimated at 20 euros for rail. For comparison, for buses, such costs amount to 38 euros, for airplanes – 48 euros, and for passenger cars – as much as 87 euros. In the field of freight transport, calculated in euros per 1,000 tonne-kilometers, rail transport is 19 euros, the cost of water transport is 17 euros, and the most popular transport in Poland using trucks – 88 euros.
In Poland, over 12 years (from 1998 to the end of 2009), a total of 125.4 billion PLN was spent on rail and road infrastructure, including 108 billion PLN – i.e., 86.1% of all expenditures – on roads. During this time, 17.4 billion PLN was spent on railway lines, i.e., 13.9%. In 2009 alone, 3.6 billion PLN was spent on 19,200 km of active railway lines. In contrast, expenditures on 18,400 km of national roads in the same period amounted to 32.3 billion PLN, which is 9 times more.
The latest document is the “Master plan” for rail transport in Poland until 2030 (adopted by Resolution No. 277 of the Council of Ministers of December 19, 2008). The following strategic goals have been defined for the rail sector:
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ensuring the competitiveness of rail in relation to other modes of transport in the most developing market segments,
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balancing the sectoral structure of transport and limiting environmental damage resulting from the increase in demand for transport, including the rapid development of road transport,
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ensuring conditions for improving the quality of customer service by rail carriers,
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ensuring stable financing for railway infrastructure,
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operational and allocative efficiency of rail transport resources,
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effective use of human resources and optimization of employment.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 5/2011.