Welcome to this week's Transport Vlog!
Now, this edition is all about railways and trains
after 25 European countries signed a declaration last week
saying they want to boost international trade travel.
So here are three things to watch out for when it comes to trains.
First thing: that declaration.
Now, it says that they want to boost our ability to cross borders by rail,
work on things like through-ticketing,
employ things like digital solutions
and basically make it easier for us to get from one country to another.
25 countries signed up to it,
two non-EU members, Switzerland and Norway.
Switzerland's a bit of a given, really,
considering that it's borders
so many countries that are in the EU.
There's already a precedent for a bit of collaboration across borders on this.
Last year, Swiss state-owned railway company said
that they would collaborate with France's and Italy's,
in order to take away the short-haul flight market share.
That's starting to pay off slightly.
In terms of countries that didn't sign up to it,
Malta and Cyprus didn't because they're islands
they don't have any tunnel collections
like the United Kingdom does.
And Estonia didn't
because they have a different gauge to the rest of Europe at the moment.
They are involved with the Rail Baltica infrastructure project
which is supposed to do a direct link between Warsaw and Tallinn
and maybe even on to Helsinki
through an undersea tunnel at some point.
That's a multi-billion Euro project
that's getting EU funding.
It's supposed to be done by 2025
but these kind of projects obviously aren't always on track.
And the other country that didn't sign up was Croatia
because they're the rotating EU presidency holder at the moment
and the presidency holder generally
doesn't get involved with these kind of declarations
they're kind of the honest broker,
but they support it in some way or another.
So things like ticketing are really things to watch out for because
any of us can go on to sky scanner
or another website like that
and we want to go from one airport to another
via another hub.
To do that by train is quite difficult at the moment
because companies often don't share their data,
you have to really go deep into the website
in order to find what you want.
You have to be an aficionado to know what you're doing.
Which puts off like general everyday travelers.
You know, the bargains are out there,
there are plenty of sites where you can go and
find a special ticket but
in the age of convenient travel
that is not something that you want
when you can just get on a 30 minute flight somewhere.
The second thing is the shift to rail of freight
that a lot of people want to see in order to get
cargo and goods off of the roads onto trains.
During the coronavirus pandemic
a lot of passenger trains have not run because of lack of demand
so freight operators have been able to offer more punctual
and greater capacity of services.
They want that to continue
once passenger trains start going back up to their normal services
and one of the main things that those companies want
is a super national management service.
So if freight is going from Italy to France, for example,
they should be able to rely on a common set of sort of rules
and timetabling and something where they can
really say to customers:
'Look, if you give us your freight
it will arrive by this point.'
Which at the moment is one of the main obstacles
to large companies giving rail companies big contracts.
Because they just don't know whether or not
their cargo is going to arrive on time.
Something which you generally can -
depending on the day -
guarantee with road freight.
So that's one thing to look out for
is that a lot of things like the EU Green Deal
and the 'Year of the Train' the Commission wants to do next year
is geared towards getting goods off the road
and on the trains because it's such a sustainable option,
they can often be powered by electricity
which again brings down energy consumption.
Blah blah blah blah.
So big issue, very complex
but it's one of those really sort of niche options
where the EU is actually quite suited
to doing something like a working party
on cross border freight and something.
So look out for that one.
Third thing is tourism and staycations.
Now, a lot of countries are still in a quandary about
whether or not to open up their borders,
how they're going to do it
will there be air bridges..
The UK is already backtracking on its 14-day quarantine
and saying that oh we'll have a travel bubble with the EU,
something like freedom of movement, you know,
wherever you heard that before.
So, it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world
for countries to sort of promote domestic tourism
for the coming months.
And Belgium has tried to do just that
and is allegedly going to be offering Belgium residents
10 free train tickets
to use over the summer months
in order to go from one end to the other.
But of course in the most Belgium fashion possible
the government didn't really consult with the train company
before they announce this.
So we'll see whether or not that sees the light of day or not.
But it opens up another sort of link back to this declaration
that we were saying
is that trains are going to maybe
come into their own in the coming months and years
because of the effect that the coronavirus
has had on the aviation industry,
a lot of companies aren't going to survive,
a lot of passenger habits have changed
even though different kind of companies like Airbus and airlines say
that the safety place you can be is in an air airplane cabin
because of the filtration mechanisms.
A lot of people simply don't want to take the chance of going to an airport
wearing a mask and getting an infection -
the mindset of course, maybe the facts don't back that up.
But when it comes to a train
it's more of a sustainable option in more ways than one.
So, the international declaration that we opened the video with,
could really be a game changer
because it really gives people
it gives people a signal
that the training industry is going somewhere
rather than suffering from the chronic lack of interest and funding
it has done for the last thousand years.
Take one example:
you can go from Brussels to Prague
with a few stops for 29 Euros, if you're lucky.
And it takes 11 hours.
Those are the kind of journeys that people really want to back up.
So look out for that.
It could be the year of the train next year.
2021 - if we survive that long of course.
Fingers crossed.
And once again thanks for everyone
who has chipped in a centime or two
to the crowdfunding that EURACTIV is having at the moment.
We really appreciate it
and together we can pull through this, of course.
Thank you for subscribing.
If you haven't already, please do so.
And tune in next week for another video
and the rest of the newsletter.
Ciao!