The time for policy appeals is here. All across the board, rail freight parties are signalling their wishes for the future – now also including the Association of European Rail Rolling Stock Lessors (AERRL). It sent an open letter to the new European transport Commissioner and the chair of the parliamentary transport committee with two urgent calls for action.
“AERRL represents the group of rail stakeholders that currently invest the most in modern and cross-border motorised rolling stock in the European Union”, the association writes. “By doing so, AERRL members are significantly contributing to the sustainability of the transport industry and the greening of the rail fleet. Notably, 80 per cent of the newly ordered leased fleet are electric.”
To facilitate continued success, the association is saying that public funds should primarily go to infrastructure expenditures. It highlights the infamous track access charges, which it says ought to be reduced.
No subsidies for new rolling stock
On the other hand, it is notably warning against subsidies that would disrupt the market of new rolling stock acquisition. The AERRL says that “rolling stock lessors demonstrated over the past 15 years their capability to finance and deliver locomotives towards the locomotive passenger and freight market.” The association concludes that public funding for the procurement of newly built rolling stock should be “more strongly or explicitly forbidden”.
Where there are subsidies, they should focus on upgrading existing rolling stock with European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS), Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) and Digital Automatic Coupling (DAC). “European support could be also related to industry research and development projects likely to facilitate cross-border operations or prepare for the end of diesel traction”, AERRL says.
ERTMS
The rolling stock lessors lament the chaotic and expensive implementation of ERTMS, and say that there must come an end to the fragmentation of the various system standards: “ERTMS should be deployed in a coordinated manner from a single BL3.4 release as a foundation, with regulations that support the use of existing locomotives without imposing new limitations”, the association argues.
“Locomotive lessors have over the past years massively invested in modern corridor, electric, diesel and dual-mode locomotives to support the cross-border operation of numerous European freight and passenger railway operators. Most of these are natively equipped with ETCS BL 2 and more recently BL 3. In this context we are requesting that the FRMCS standard must be natively compatible with existing BL3.4 standard”, it adds.