Environmental performance and implications of high-speed rail

Abstract

In Europe, for example, although the movement towards a more sustainable transport system had started at least a decade earlier, it was not until 2008 when a specific ‘greening transport package’ was introduced by the European Commission (EC). It contained several provisions aimed at internalizing external costs that were later developed in more detail in the 2011 White Paper (European Commission, 2011).1 Many of these initiatives were implicitly based on the idea that a ‘modal shift’ was needed to displace passengers and freight flows from less ‘environmentally friendly’ modes (road and air) towards ‘greener’ ones (rail and maritime transport). To achieve this goal the EC has renewed its interest in the restructuring of the European rail markets in order to strengthen its position vis-à-vis other modes. Recent figures (Eurostat, 2015) suggest that the rail freight market is still stagnant (its EU-28 share has remained at 18 per cent since 2002) but efforts are paying out in passenger traffic, where the aggregate share increased to 7.5 per cent in 2012 as compared to 6.8 per cent in 2002. Most of this success is explained by the development of HSR which, according to International Union of Railways (UIC) statistics (www.uic.org/highspeed), has consistently increased the number of passengers in France, Germany and Spain, and gained market share from airlines over medium-distance routes.