Dutch activists have launched their fifth rail blockade in the Port of Rotterdam, after a fourth one that took place on Friday. There seems to be no end in sight for the blockades that are a disaster for rail freight: Besides financial damage, customers are growing unhappy about the unreliability of trains.
Protestors of the activist group “Geef Tegengas” have taken to the rails once again to make their voices heard about injustices in the world. “Today we block the Havenspoorlijn [port railway] for the fifth time. The rail sector is wondering why we’re hurting their ‘sustainable sector’ so much. We ask: If you’re transporting poison, death and destruction, are you really that green?”, the group says on Telegram.
The protest started at 11:00. By 12:30 the police had arrested five protestors and removed the rest from the tracks. Access to the rail infrastructure is prohibited. Police seem to have intervened faster than in earlier cases – the first blockade lasted almost five hours.
Geef Tegengas published a short video of their protest on Friday:
Rail freight reaction
Dutch private rail freight association RailGood is not particularly enthusiastic about the situation. Its frontman Hans-Willem Vroon calls the protests “damaging”. “These are big drops in already full buckets.” In other words, problems for rail freight are becoming too big a burden to bear.
If such protests last a good chunk of the day, then you may see 30 trains blocked and 35,000 euros in revenue loss for each one of them. “With a five per cent profit margin for a single train, a whole lot more trains need to drive in an already dwindling market to become profitable again”, he explains.
And it is not just that. The finances are one thing, but these hindrances also put rail’s customer base at risk. “Rail is not available and reliable again and again. A lot of customers are sick of it”, Vroon says. Protests in the name of sustainability and climate may therefore risk a more intense reverse modal shift.