European Railroad Discussion > New European Freight Rail Line

From 12/24/2007 Los Angeles Times

Freight rolls on new rail route

The link will enable cargo to move more efficiently from Rotterdam's port to destinations in Europe.
By Robert Wright, Financial Times
December 24, 2007
The occasional freight train clanks over a new bridge on the main railway line to Antwerp at the northern end of the Netherlands' largest rail yard, at Kijfhoek near Rotterdam, before entering a tunnel that leads to Germany.

The trains are among the first commercial services on the Betuwe Route, a 100-mile-long freight route that is intended to transform the ability of the port of Rotterdam, Europe's busiest recipient of Asian trade, to handle onward movements by rail.

Betuwe is the most significant of many projects underway in northern Europe to help ports cope with the rapid surge in import traffic created by Asia's trade boom. Kijfhoek marks the start of the new section of the line, where it crosses the main line and joins the existing tracks into Rotterdam's port, the third-busiest in the world.

However, the route is some way off from handling the 10 trains an hour in each direction for which it was designed. Since its opening in June, the route has been battling signaling problems involving the new European Rail Traffic Management System, which is intended eventually to become Europe's standard.

Locomotives equipped to use the system have yet to receive full safety clearance from the Dutch authorities and, at present, the main part of the route from Kijfhoek to Zevenaar on the German border is allowed to handle only one train in each direction at a time.

The signaling problem is only the latest in the two-decade history of the Betuwe Route project, which has weathered public opposition, soaring costs and multiple delays to reach the threshold of being fully operational.

There remain concerns that the line may never be able to earn back the $6.9 billion it has cost to build -- particularly because it competes with the heavily used waterway system, which is free to use.

However, Cees Tommel and Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, joint chief executives of Keyrail, the Dutch company in charge of the route, remain confident. The route can soon capture 80% of the Netherlands' east-west rail freight traffic, according to Sjoerdsma.

Capacity on the neighboring mixed-traffic routes, where freight trains have to share track with a growing number of passenger trains, is already tight.

Booming container trade with Asia will be an important driver for the line, Tommel says, though it also will carry new cars, oil and dry bulk products such as iron ore from South America. Keyrail is 50% owned by Prorail, the state-owned owner of the Netherlands' rail network, 35% by the port of Rotterdam and 15% by the port of Amsterdam.

The line, which has been under planning or construction since 1990, originally was conceived as an upgraded, freight-only alternative to the existing rail line through the Netherlands' Betuwe region. The modest costs originally projected have doubled, largely because of the effects of public opposition, which forced the builders to go to the expense of putting 11 miles of the line in costly tunnels.

The new traffic management system has exacerbated the problems. Unlike traditional signaling systems designed and fitted by a single company, the new system is based on a specification drawn up by the European Railways Agency, a European Union body.

While the open specification prevents a single manufacturer from having a stranglehold over the technology, there have been problems proving that different manufacturers' equipment will work safely together.

The line will be able to work at full capacity only when the traffic management system's equipment has been approved for use on all locomotive types.