2023-12-10 09:03:00
We must qualify. Very few people will go from Brussels to Stockholm, 19 hours by train, or to Lisbon by rail. Beyond 10 to 11 hours of daytime train travel, there is no demand and rail is therefore not relevant. It’s too long for the passenger and I therefore don’t see a profitable business model for a railway company on such journeys. There will be a minority who will take their time by train, staying in a hotel between connections, but this remains tiny. Time is an element that often plays more than price in a traveler’s decision. It is therefore necessary to take comparisons over shorter distances. The difference in price between a plane and train ticket from Brussels to Berlin, 6h30 by train, or to Vienna, Lyon, London or Marseille is therefore not significant. And all the more so since we must add transfers to airports, baggage and all the other hidden costs that low cost companies have the secret to. A Ryanair passenger often pays much more than the ticket price.
How can we explain this difficulty that trains have in competing with planes on prices?
The costs are different. For a train line, you need stations and railway tracks. While only airports are needed for planes. Infrastructure costs are therefore higher for rail.
Is there not also a lack of competition between rail operators?
Yes. The air sector was liberalized almost thirty years ago in Euripe, while the opening to competition is completely new for the rail sector. We must remember that plane tickets used to be very expensive because there were national monopolies. Opening up to competition will force traditional airlines to lower their costs. Today Brussels Airlines does not really cost more than Ryanair. Another problem is lack of capacity. Take the Eurostar, which remains expensive, between Brussels and London. There is only one company that offers these lines. It would be very complicated for a competitor to enter this market because there would not be enough places in the stations, as well as a problem with the organization of customs control by the British authorities. For the Brussels-Paris line, it’s the same. There is already, from the start, congestion between Brussels stations. If you don’t have competition, the incumbent operators don’t really minimize their production costs and keep their prices high. It’s no secret: the SNCF uses its profits from its high-speed trains to finance its structures.
When will we give up aviation sports and city trips by plane?
Is rail liberalization in Europe already a failure?
No I wouldn’t say that. Where there is capacity, we see that new entrants are slowly arriving. But they have to invest a lot, which explains why the supply remains very limited. The Ryanair of high-speed train is not for tomorrow. Enormous investment costs are required and there are few companies with the financial backbone to get started. On the other hand, there is a low-cost offer which is gradually developing on fairly long routes but which remain national in Germany or Austria, such as Flixtrain. It is the most active private actor. He had plans for Belgium but they were The liberalization of freight transport has also shown positive effects, as has the introduction of competition between local and regional trains in the Netherlands and Germany. Prices there have fallen by 25 to 30%. In Belgium we refused this competition of the internal market. SNCB is protected for ten years from external competition. It is a political choice of the Belgian government.
Is the train the miracle solution to fight global warming, while allowing us to continue traveling long distances?
Fighting climate change requires a change of mentality. It’s a political scam to make people believe that we are going to save the planet without making any effort, without changing our way of life. We lie to people when we tell them that they just need to replace their Range Rover with a Tesla to save the planet. We must not make people believe that hyper-fast trains are going to go everywhere in Europe to replace the nasty, polluting planes. Many people are not ready to accept this. We ask bad questions and give bad answers because the political world does not dare to tell the truth. If we want to work to avoid global warming, we must work on the masses, where there is a strong demand for the train, and amplify this offer.
Are air prices abnormally low?
No, otherwise the airlines would all be bankrupt. That said, there is no valid reason to maintain the exemption from kerosene taxation put in place just after the Second World War. We could very easily consider taxation on aircraft fuel at European level. The liberalization of the skies in Europe, inspired by that of the United States, has created competition which has made it possible to travel cheaper, but the prices charged are not abnormally low.
You are not a big fan of night trains, although the number of them is increasing in Europe. For what ?
The problem with night trains is that they are not profitable. Maybe they will be one day, but the business model does not seem to generate a significant margin. New entrants to this market collect from public authorities to obtain subsidies. But, in my opinion, we must put public money where it really has an impact. However, investing public funds to allow people to travel by train at night when they could make the same journey during the day has no benefit for the planet. Above all, this deprives public authorities of money to develop daytime provision. I have nothing against night trains, even if I don’t find them very comfortable, but let’s play with the market.
What are the most promising projects for international trains from Belgium, in your opinion?
There’s not much in the boxes. All the companies which had announced international transport projects via Belgium and without collaborating with the SNCB have chickened out. For me the most likely player to operate from Belgium is Flixtrain. The principle of this German company is to circulate fairly old cars, which they have purchased second or even third hand, but completely renovated. This allows them to offer low prices. Flixtrain had quite a few projects in Europe, but they were frozen following the Covid crisis. Political voluntarism has a cost and Belgium does not have the money to stimulate long-distance rail transport. We are a highly indebted country where the margins for raising new revenues are low, with a tax rate which is already one of the highest in the world. There is little room for maneuver.
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