30 leaders the national railway act beeing in force in lot of points and its apply not always meet the requirements of the market. We work on it together with the Ministry of National Development and we hope, that a railway act will be enacted in one year in Hungary, which will serve the interest of the market players. HUNGRAIL would like to do for the competitiveness of the central and eastern European railfreight. This year autumn will be organized by HUNGRAIL a palatial event for the first time, called CEE FUTURAIL. We hope, that the companies’ CEOs, who work on the essential route of this area, will participate in the event. We would like to give the opportunity to talk about the real problems whereupon solutions can be found already on the event. Railway PRO: What is your opinion about the liberalisation of domestic railway passenger transport, now perfectly in operation with the vote on the 4th Railway Package? László Mosóczi: Although the First Reading of the European Parliament resulted a much better overall requirementpackage on that dossier (Regulation 1370/2007) than it was firstly drafted by the European Commission, I still think that for Hungary the opening of the market for domestic railway passenger services would be too early. Even though I think that the compulsory tendering for public service contracts is a very good initiative for the sake of improving competition on the market regarding the passenger services, but we have to impose a strong consideration for the healthy balance between the different railway undertakings of different countries (I mean here that the bigger and stronger RUs shall not “cherrypick” the best lines for themselves thus creating an economic disproportion.) Regarding the “open access” of the rolling stock, for Hungary neither the current legislative environment, nor the lasting contracts would not allow such measures to be carried out still for a while, notably I mean here, that we have to take into consideration the existing long-term public service contracts with MÁV and GYSEV. Altogether my opinion regarding that legislative proposal of the 4th Railway Package is that it is going too fast and demands too radical changes with its proposals, not adequately taking into account the realistic situation and overall needs of the railway sector. On the other hand, in terms of socioeconomic provisions, I think quite positive measures were accepted to the text, such as the authorities have to grant rules for the transfer of staff in the event of change of operator, and that authorities have to ensure decent employment and working conditions too while taking into account the existing collective agreements, national and regional rules. www.railwaypro.com | July 2014
Last but not least, if I consider the measures of the accepted text in the regard of the smaller operators, for them it is going to be definitely more beneficial to compete for public service contracts, because size limits have been defined by setting a minimum number of contracts to be awarded in each Member State according to traffic volume. Railway PRO: Could you describe, in a few paragraphs, the strategies in Hungary for the development of container transportation? László Mosóczi: It is really crucial to augment the share of container transportation in rail freight traffic. The only competitive way of integrated rail, waterway, and road transport is the container transportation. Goods transported in containers (in case they comply with the climatic circumstances too) are usually safe (against mechanical damages and against theft), they have the potential to be able to get transported easily and rapidly therefore a “door to door” transfer is feasible. A current and actual freight transportation key issue is the “single wagon traffic”. It is a common alternative of the container transportation as goods are placed into the containers after production at the factory and after transportation on road the goods are being loaded to rail at the closest intermodal terminal. This solution is cheaper than if only single wagon transport would be carried out on rail. Unfortunately, RoLa transport has lost from its past role in the Central-Eastern European territories after the EU joining. In case only the container and the goods without the truck and the driver would be shifted to rail then definitely a contribution to the increase of rail freight transport modal share could be realized. The role of the ports of the River Danube is also increasing, therefore more space shall be provided for container transportation on the long term. Railway PRO: What can you tell us about the construction of Budapest bypass route “V0”? What are the advantages of this project regarding the connection of the Hungarian railway network with the neighbouring countries?
László Mosóczi: As far as the Hungarian railway network is concerned, all the main transit lines are running through and crossing each other in Budapest. The River Danube, which crosses Hungary from a North - Southern direction, can only be crossed by railway in Budapest and in the south Hungarian city of Baja. Regarding the major rail transit axes (crossing at Budapest) going through Hungary are the following: Austria –Romania, Austria – Serbia, Slovenia/Croatia – Eastern-Slovakia, in addition Záhony-Dunaújváros and the Záhony-Austria directions. In case the “V0” railway line would be realized then the transit rail freight traffic would not need to cross via Budapest therefore not only the capacity of Budapest would increase but the transit times could be reduced so as the speed of rail freight trains could increase for the overall benefit of the transit flows and the customers. Thus, the capacity of the railway infrastructure in Budapest would be mostly provided for the long-distance and suburban passenger traffic and flows, freight traffic will not “confiscate” capacity from the passenger traffic. Additionally, several planned infrastructure development projects could be “ignored”, such as the “multiple-tracking project of the Southern Connecting Bridge of Budapest”, and thus the currently exceeded role of the Budapest Ferencváros Marshalling Yard could be reduced too. This could definitely have a positive effect for the capital, as the precious free capacity could be exploited for some better purposes. The already discussed freight priority corridors of the Mediterranean (RFC6) and the Orient/East-Med (RFC7) would pass by also on the V0 curve as well, therefore facilitating the crossing of the provisional international rail freight flows, by making them even more seamless and fast. Hungary aims to augment the transit rail freight traffic remarkably on the long term, therefore contributing to the overall EU strategy of the European Commission by attracting even more volumes from road to rail. V0 could be a means of contributing for that concept by providing rail transit traffic with better circumstances in terms of qualitative and quantitative measures.
Чрезвычайно важно увеличить долю контейнерных грузовых перевозок Венгрия уделяет особое внимание развитию международных коридоров грузовых перевозок, особенно развитию Средиземноморского коридора, и это обеспечивает ей доступ не только к Западноевропейскому рынку, но и к украинскому, тем самым увеличивая ее транзитный потенциал на Евразийской платформе. Развитие отношений в сфере железнодорожных перевозок по направлению Восток - Запад, увеличение грузопотоков, перевозимых из Азии в сторону Европы и способность венгерской сети удовлетворить спрос, проекты развития венгерской железнодорожной профильной индустрии или стратегия Венгрии в плане развития контейнерных перевозок числятся среди тем, которые были затронуты и детализированы в интервью президента компании Hungrail (Hungarian Rail Association), господина Ласло Мосочи, журналу Railway PRO.