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Paul Laeremans, president of the International Road Transport Union, says
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the perception that rail is always more eco-friendly than road is false.
II If you want to sound off about a road transport issue write to features editor
Patric Cunnane or fax your views (up to 600 words) to Ricky Clarke on 020 8652 8912.
6 The road transport industry has begun 2002 facing an
uncertain economic climate, with the US now officially in recession and unemployment rising in some EU member states, notably Germany. Fuel prices have reduced recently, but trouble in the Middle East could lead to a sudden return to excessively high prices, again jeopardising operators' very existence. Within the EU, we face the additional challenge of political and public opinion that is often overtly anti-road transport. This makes it difficult for our industry to correct misconceptions and restore balance to misguided policy initiatives.
In a nutshell, the issue is that road transport is generally seen as a problem, if not the problem, whereas we know that it is a solution, if not the solution. To achieve viable and equitable policy solutions, these misconceptions will have to be corrected. Environmental impact is the area where the gap between perception and reality is perhaps the widest, Despite achieving significant reductions in many types of emissions and being the only transport sector to have committed itself to the goal of sustainable development, as set out in the UN environmental blueprint Agenda 21, road transport suffers from a poor image on the environmental front, compared with some other modes of transport.
For example, many national and EU policymakers take it as given that, in environmental performance, railways are inherently far superior to road transport.
Where is the data to support this assumption? Last year, the RU and its German member association, the BGL, which represents the road transport sector, jointly commissioned a study called Comparative Analysis of Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions of Road Transport and Combined Transport Road/Rail. Carried out in Germany, the study measured the impact of the total energy chain for both transport solutions along 17 European corridors.
The results suggest that reality is more complex than the perception. The study showed that the total energy consumption of road transport was not markedly greater than that of combined transport in 10 out of 17 cases. Full results of the study will be available shortly.
On three of the corridors examined, the pure road transport
solution generated the same amount of CO2 or less than did a combination of road and rail transport. On only six routes did combined transport deliver markedly lower CO2 emissions than the pure road alternative.
In four of these six cases, the lower emissions from combined transport were because the trains used electricity from non-fossil fuel power sources, primarily nuclear plants. In the other two cases, the key factor was that the road feeding and delivery component did not significantly increase overall transport distances.
The IRU/BGL study also confirms that the environmental impact of combined transport varies according to the technique used. The best performance was obtained with swap-bodies or containers carried unaccompanied on the train.
The worst results were arrived at when using the rolling highway method, where the entire tractor and semi-trailer combination is carried on the train, along with its driver.
However, unaccompanied combined transport is most vulnerable to disruption because timetables are often ignored, which has encouraged some policymakers to support the inefficient rolling highway solution, which can only function with the help of massive subsidies.
When total energy chains are compared, road transport's CO2 emissions performance is better than many policymakers would have us believe and we already know that other emissions from road transport have been reduced massively in recent years.
Hallways certainly have an important role to play, but they are not such an environmentally superior solution that they should be developed regardless of economic cost.
Let's look at all the aspects of the issue and then start adjusting perceptions and policies to better reflect reality.