Market share is falling: Fewer goods on the rails

Friday March 19, 2021

Market share is declining
Less goods on the rails

For years it has been demanded, promised and announced that more freight traffic should be shifted from road to rail. But the opposite is now happening. That has to do with the Corona crisis, but it is by far not the only thing to do with it.

The market share of rail freight transport in Germany declined during the Corona crisis. This emerges from a response from the federal government to a request from the Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag. Accordingly, with reference to forecast values ​​for transport performance, the market share of rail freight transport fell from 19 percent in 2019 to 17.5 percent in 2020. The share of road freight transport, on the other hand, rose slightly. Reasons for this were not given.

The Green traffic politician Matthias Gastel spoke of a "traffic policy alarm cry". The corona pandemic is only of limited use as an explanation in this context. "Politically relevant reasons for the sharp decline in freight rail transport performance are the structural problems at DB Cargo and the distortions of competition in the transport market, which are affecting the entire rail sector," said Gastel. "If the federal government wants to achieve its self-imposed target of 25 percent market share in rail freight transport by 2030, it must finally translate its Sunday speeches on transport policy with the slogan 'shift more traffic to rail' into action."

Gastel said the Greens considered a market share of 30 percent for rail freight transport by 2030 to be necessary and also possible if the course is now set correctly. "In the short term, the freight railways can help in the coronavirus crisis if the federal government takes over the train path prices. The gradual abolition of climate-damaging diesel subsidies is also long overdue and only one building block for fair competition between rail and road." In the long term, a network expansion strategy is needed that creates additional capacities for rail freight transport.

Bahn-Cargo boss has ambitious goals

In February, Bahn Cargo boss Sigrid Nikutta said that she thought the corona effects on rail freight traffic could be overcome quickly. "We can already see how stable the European industry actually is," she told "The Pioneer". If the vaccination goes ahead and other branches start up again, the pre-crisis level can be reached again "very, very quickly" – economically as in rail freight transport. Your goal is to increase the volume of freight transport by rail, said Nikutta: "I assume that we will be able to double the volume by rail in the next decade."

DB Cargo controls around half of the rail freight traffic in Germany. According to the company, around 20,000 trains per week run for the state-owned company, around 60 percent of which cross national borders. The remaining 50 percent of the market belongs to competitors organized in the European Railways Network.