CTU study: Appropriate vehicles must operate on modernized lines

The CTU document shows that one of the decisive parameters is the line speed on the infrastructure side and the maximum speed and dynamic properties on the vehicle side. For example, if a modernized section allows a speed of 160 km/h, but the deployed vehicle can only handle 120 km/h, the potential of the line cannot be fully utilized. The result is longer travel times, lower track capacity, poorer timetable design, and lower attractiveness of the railway for passengers. “Investments in railway infrastructure must be linked to appropriate requirements for vehicles. If trains that cannot utilize their parameters are purchased for modernized lines, public funds will not bring maximum effect,” said Marie Vopálenská, CEO of ACRI. In such a case, trains purchased from subsidy funds could also be at risk of having the subsidy returned due to failure to meet the conditions of their technical compatibility with the existing or planned infrastructure on which they will be operated. Deliberate undervaluation of projects is not permissible. According to the study, the problem is primarily systemic. There is a lack of sufficiently strong coordination between infrastructure development, regional transport planning and the parameters of newly acquired vehicles. The study therefore recommends that vehicles be dimensioned according to future, not just current, track parameters, and that there be a clear technical standard for their procurement. “We recommend setting a national technical standard for newly acquired vehicles, which must correspond to the prospective state of the infrastructure, taking into account the service life of vehicles, which usually exceeds 30 years. For vehicles acquired with a subsidy, the vehicle standard should already be described in the conditions of the subsidy title as protection against thwarting investments from subsidy financing,” said Martin Jacura from the Faculty of Transport at the Czech Technical University in Prague. There are several reasons why the system is currently not effective: lack of coordination of investments in railway infrastructure and railway vehicles, non-existent guarantees regarding investments in railway infrastructure at least in the medium term, low mutual communication between transport clients and the railway operator, prevailing evaluation aspect of "price" on the part of the transport client, focusing on a single operational concept (on the part of the client, railway operator or on both sides), non-existence of a suitable EMU, BEMU vehicle at the time of contracting, failure to achieve the necessary state of the infrastructure at a time when the client already needed to contract a follow-up contract for public passenger transport services. Although strategic conceptual documents exist at the national, regional and local levels, the consistency between them is very limited. As one example, the authors of the study cite the Pardubice hl. n. - Hradec Králové hl. n., where, according to the National ETCS Implementation Plan and the Railway Declaration, exclusive ETCS operation is expected from December 2028. However, the existing carrier here has a valid contract for the operation of the long-distance line R14A Pardubice - Liberec until December 2029. Therefore, if the dates are not adjusted, it will be necessary either to retrofit the currently operated train units with ETCS mobile parts near the end of their physical lifespan (around 40 years), which is economically inefficient, or to introduce other operational measures (overhead, transfer, etc.). The CTU material also points out that there is no obligation for regions to incorporate the conclusions of national strategies into their plans, which also results from the minimal time coordination of their creation and overlap. "The basic deficiency of documents at the national level is the low to zero guarantee of the stated dates, which subsequently puts regional transport customers in uncertainty about the state of the infrastructure with an impact on the parameters of railway vehicles that are then very difficult to determine. The result is low coordination and synchronization of investments with the planning of operational concepts and ultimately this leads to higher costs for public budgets to cover the amount of costs of carriers that are not covered by fares," added Martin Jacura. The need for strategic planning with guaranteed dates is also gaining importance in connection with the further modernization of the backbone railway network (and the construction of the VRT), when travel times between the most important nodes will be further reduced. Current transport and economic models assume an increase in the attractiveness of railway transport and an increase in passengers. However, this will be very difficult to achieve without a clear strategy and cooperation of all parties involved.