Does competition benefit customers?

Carole took part as a speaker at the 6th International Railway Summit in Prague in a panel discussion addressing whether competition benefits customers. Carole represented the perspectives of the private and independent freight operator members of the European Rail Freight Association (ERFA).

The European Rail Freight Association (ERFA) is an association which represents private and independent railway companies from across Europe. ERFA aims to achieve the best conditions for a competitive railway sector. Our mission is to promote rail transport as a first and viable choice for customers, and to ensure full market opening of rail across all of Europe. ERFA’s objective is to represent the voice of new market entrants in Europe. We support the EU decision-making process with a focus on policy and technical affairs. Our focus is on generating growth for demand in rail services and shifting more goods onto eco-friendly rail.

We represent more than 1/3 of the rail freight market share.

ERFA’s existence and activities are based on this conviction: competition in a healthy environment benefits customers. Our members are competing between each other for customers because they are convinced that they can bring an added value to customers, and their continuous growth has demonstrated that they can.

Within ERFA, we favour competition as away to meet customer needs. European policy takes note that a monopoly situation fosters pricing distortion: limited customer orientation and unsustainable business models. Let’s take for instance the French situation audited in the Spinetta Report that concludes that the current SNCF business model has to be adapted and that competition has to be developed on the French market.

Competition and the existence of private operators on the market have many advantages. Among them, monopoly service providers will never have the same pressure to decrease prices, improve quality, innovate, as when they are competing with other companies for customers. Better quality creates pressure for higher performance. Also, better price drives down costs.

Moreover, we have in mind that innovation is beneficial to drive the development of superior products for the market. We think that information availability creates the climate for enhancing customer communication. We want customers to have the power to make choices: if a customer is unhappy with one Railway Undertaking, he has other options.

To conclude, competition in a healthy Market environment benefits customers; but healthy competition is still not the case in most EU countries today! In most EU countries one dominant market player, normally the state-owned incumbent, trounces the competition with the nearest, biggest competitor trailing far behind. This should be not the case if the right framework conditions were in place to support sustainable business models for freight. So yes, rail freight is open to competition today, but still not able to deliver the products needed by the market.

Handling congestion and an evolving demand in Paris

Thierry spoke at the 5th International Railway Summit in Kuala Lumpur about the challenges of congestion and demand facing Paris and RATP, and the solutions being implemented and proposed

The Paris Region and its transport operator RATP are responding to an evolving mass transport demand by improving the existing system, and building a brand new ring rail road.

Ten years ago, the Paris public transport system featured a dense network of downtown metro lines mainly dating from the early 20th century, with two regional rapid transit (RER) lines, built in the 1970s, bisecting the city and linking it to its suburbs. The system was struggling to cope with a combination of increasing congestion and mobility demands that were evolving significantly.

People used to travel into Paris from the suburbs to work, but the arrival of new business clusters in the region has created urban sprawl in previously rural areas. 70% of the adult population now commute from suburb to suburb, a 50% increase since the 1980s. With hardly any orbital public transport available, they either use their cars on a congested road network, or take the RER through the middle of Paris, thereby overcrowding lines that are already saturated at peak periods.

So the double challenge for Paris and RATP has been to increase capacity on the existing network, and to better serve the needs of passengers travelling from suburb to suburb.

Driverless metro lines have played a major role in improving capacity: following the success of Line 14, Paris’ first automated line that opened in 1998, Line 1 was automated in 2011, and the automation of Line 4 is underway. Automation has cut headway by 20%, increased commercial speed through more controlled acceleration and braking, and considerably reduced per km compared to a standard line.

Train shapes have been designed to increase passenger capacity with new interior layouts on metro rolling stock offering new seating arrangements and more standing room, and double-decker RER trains bringing 30% added capacity.

Unlike the older underground lines whose stations cannot be lengthened, Line 14’s stations were built to anticipate longer trains, so when the line upgrades from 6- to 8-car trains in 2019, and then extends north and south in 2023 and 2024 respectively, it will increase its passenger capacity by about a third, to reach a total of one million passenger journeys per day.

To link Paris’ close suburbs, RATP is rebuilding its tramway network with 11 new light rail lines, that also act as feeders into the metro and RER. To link the more remote suburbs that have grown around the new business clusters, the authorities are launching a major orbital metro network, the Greater Paris Express.

The project will open in several phases from 2022 to 2030, with the extended Line 14 as its backbone, and once completed, its high-capacity driverless trains will operate on 205 kilometers of line, linking 72 multimodal stations and transporting 2 million passengers daily.

In Paris, RATP is helping to solve the challenges of sustainable mobility by combining increased capacity with new orbital public transport solutions. RATP Dev is an RATP Group subsidiary set up in 2002 to help other cities outside Paris and France face similar challenges. As a world leader in Driverless Operation, with 16,000 employees in 14 countries worldwide, we at RATP Dev are well-equipped to work with cities that want to be less congested and polluted, and more attractive and efficient.

Disruptive technology and urban rail in the London context

As Director of Strategy for Transport for London, Gareth explored how disruptive technology is changing urban rail within the city at the 4th International Railway Summit in Paris in February 2017.

As a city we are facing some of our biggest challenges to date. London is continually growing, with the population set to rise from 8.6 to 10 million by 2030. We have some of the oldest transport infrastructure in the world which is relied on by millions of people every day. It has never been more vital to invest in transport to support jobs and growth in the Capital. We also need to be keeping pace with technology and the impacts this can have on both public transport and our customers.

We have one of the biggest investment programmes in the world to provide more capacity and reliability for a growing city. We have taken neglected and often unstaffed stations and transformed them into modern and useful parts of the transport system, improving capacity and safety. As demonstrated by the success of the London Overground network which has seen a five-fold increase since we took control in 2007. We are also undertaking one of the largest civil engineering projects in Europe building a new railway for London: Stretching more than 60 miles, the Elizabeth line is expected to carry over 200 million people a year. We are also maximising services on parts of the Tube, using automation and technology to improve the capabilities of services. On the Victoria line – the world’s first full-scale automatic railway – we have upgraded the signalling and it will operate 36 trains per hour during peak periods, a level of service which would simply not be possible with traditional signalling and driver operation. We are also using similar automation technology to improve the oldest part of our underground network, the sub-surface lines, with upgraded trains and a complex signalling system we will be able to run an automated service on all four lines.

As well as technology being key to improvements in public transport, technology is creating choice for customers. New approaches to private hire vehicles has made getting from A to B cheaper than ever before. This has culminated in significant increases in vehicles on London’s streets, with lower costs and increased options for door-to-door transport appealing to an increasing number of users. Car clubs and car-sharing also mean that people are moving away from sole ownership of vehicles to on-demand services. Today London makes up around 85 per cent of the UK market for car clubs with around 2,700 vehicles and 190,000 users.

On top of these new business models, automated vehicle technology has progressed hugely in the past few years and is already being trialled on London’s roads. As a strategic transport authority, we need to understand what it would mean to have vehicles that can run 24/7. Without rest breaks, they have less on-going operational costs and can adapt quickly to changing surroundings.

Increased automation presents a number of new issues that need to be fully considered – such as safety, parking, insurance and responsibility. We need to ensure that we avoid a situation where more intelligent vehicles can be programmed to idle around the city while waiting for customers, or have the potential to stop on roadsides and move off when a traffic warden approaches. We also need to ensure that automation does not suffer from abuse from hackers or cyber criminals.

It can seem an uphill battle keeping up with new technologies and the challenges and opportunities they present but it is one we must be involved in and have now created a new Innovation Directorate to do just that. The Directorate will look at current policy and identifying areas where the latest technology and innovations may be used or abused by new business models. By creating future-proofed policies, we will be able to help shape the emerging market and work productively with private companies.

TfL continues to embrace new technology and is looking at ways to get involved at earlier stages. We are working with suppliers and third parties on trials and identifying ways we could embed this technology within our operations. Through embracing these technologies, TfL hopes to deliver a modern and resilient London that is capable of meeting all the challenges it faces.

The rapidly evolving mobility world

The world of urban mobility is undergoing rapid and unprecedented change. Over the last couple of years we have seen the rapid emergence of what we call ‘new mobility players’ onto the urban mobility scene.

Whether it’s ride-selling services, free-floating car-sharing, demand responsive shuttles or even autonomous cars, what’s clear is that the traditional ‘private vs public transport’ distinction is starting to become increasingly blurred. The question now is how we best integrate these news services into a holistic, shared mobility offer that is driven by public transport.

We’re living in an age now where younger generations are less interested in owning a car or even obtaining a driving licence than their parents and the emergence of new mobility solutions and players are helping to make car-free urban living a reality.

With the help of a smartphone and an internet connection, users are now within just a few clicks of finding the mobility option, thanks to emerging ‘Mobility as a Service’ platforms. What’s more, though still in its nascent stages, the autonomous vehicle is set to play a key role in urban mobility in the years to come as part of integrated public transport networks.

UITP studies have shown that a broader mix of mobility services is the answer to ever more complex mobility needs. In cities with high-quality public transport, complemented with services such as car-sharing, bike-sharing, cycling infrastructure, shared taxi services and ride-sharing options, people can move around more easily.

This offers the flexibility and convenience of a private car, without the negative externalities. Nevertheless, there will be times when a car is needed; here, car-based services (eg. car-sharing) are the obvious solution to complement ‘traditional’ public transport as they offer the benefits of a car without the expense or hassle of ownership.

With space at such a premium in modern cities, public transport is easily the most efficient in terms of capacity, particularly on major corridors and in peak hours. Studies exploring future urban mobility with shared and autonomous vehicles undertaken by the International Transport Forum show that the most effective combination of modes always include high capacity public transport at their core.

With increasing urbanisation and the rise in demand for mobility, cities will need to plan carefully in the future to maximise the use of finite urban space and to develop high-quality public transport that presents an attractive alternative to low capacity private car journeys. No one single solution exists, but the cities that outperform the rest of the pack in terms of quality of life and economic growth will be those that place public transport at the core of their planning and complemented by a host of new mobility services.

Indeed, public transport accounts for 1.2 billion trips across the globe each day and it is this vital ‘backbone’ role that it plays, in combination with new mobility services, that will help our cities become less car dependent in the years to come.