THE EUROPEAN Rail Freight Association (ERFA) has warned the European Parliament that competition in the railfreight sector is being "strangled" by an inadequate regulatory structure and monopolistic behaviour by incumbent operators.
SWISS Federal Railways (SBB) published its first half results on September 1, revealing a 3% rise in daily passenger traffic, which increased to 1.002 million, and 27% year-on-year growth in freight traffic, which reached 7.6 billion net tonne-km.
GERMAN Rail (DB) published its financial results for the first half of 2014 on July 24, revealing that ridership on its trains in Germany increased by 10 million year-on-year to just over 1 billion passengers.
AUSTRIAN railfreight continued to suffer the effects of the prolonged economic downturn last year according to annual figures released by Austria's rail regulator Schienen-Control, which also show a strong increase in passenger traffic.
DUTCH logistics company Husa Transportation has announced it plans to withdraw its open-access railfreight operations, claiming its financial results are not good enough to justify the continued operation of its own freight trains.
FRENCH rail regulator Araf has instructed French Rail Network (RFF) to improve the process for allocating freight train paths after it upheld a complaint brought against the infrastructure manager by operators Euro Cargo Rail, Europorte France, and VFLI.
BRAZIL's National Land Transport Agency (ANTT) has published the results of a public consultation on the planned 457km Açailândia – Maranhão – Barcarena – Pará line, which will be one of the first railways in the country to operate on an open-access basis.
AUSTRIA's railways experienced a mixed fortunes in 2012 with falling freight volumes offset by rising passenger traffic, according to the annual report from the country's rail regulator Schienen-Control, which was published on July 10.
SWISS Federal Railways (SBB) railfreight unit SBB Cargo announced on April 2 that it will take over operation of most of DB Schenker's transalpine intermodal traffic between Germany and Italy from the end of this year, ousting BLS Cargo, which is 45%-owned by DB Schenker.
FOLLOWING a four-year investigation, the French competition authority has fined French National Railways (SNCF) €60.9m for anti-competitive practices following a string of complaints raised by open-access railfreight operators in 2008 and 2009.
