INFRASTRUKTUR External costs Internationales Verkehrswesen (64) 5 | 2012 37 Towards a sustainable transport system This report presents the results of an innovative study into the internalisation of external costs and the lessons that can be built on further, especially for a major inland-waterway infrastructure project, the “Saône-Moselle/ Saône-Rhine” (SMSR) project, which in future is going to provide a link between the Mediterranean Basin and Germany as well as the rest of Europe, passing through France. T he European transport sector is facing several major challenges. These include increasingly negative environmental efects of the supply chain, a severe dependence on scarce and increasingly expensive fossil fuels, the growing amount of scientiic evidence of global warming and road congestion (causing nuisance, signiicant time losses and high costs). These challenges call for a shift to a more energy-eicient and sustainable transport system. The challenges facing freight transport in europe The “polluter pays” principle (also known as internalisation of external costs) is generally considered as an economically smart basis for charging for transport. It is a principle that has strong roots in EU legislation and is even mentioned in the EU treaty. What it means is that it is the transport users who pay the cost they impose on society. This solution improves the eiciency of the whole transport system globally, since transport users are encouraged to choose the option that puts the lightest burden on society. In this context, six parties (the European Commission, VNF, RFF 1 , SPW 2 , WenZ 3 and the Ministry of Transport of the Netherlands), representing three countries (France, Belgium and the Netherlands) and the three inland modes of transport (road, inland waterways and rail), commissioned a study to explore the potential for the internalisation of external costs 4 in the particularly congested corridor between Paris and Amsterdam. The Paris-Amsterdam corridor is of major importance for the EU economy. The share of inland-waterway transport (IWT) in this corridor is going to increase sharply as of 2017, when the Seine-Scheldt link is opened. The Seine-Scheldt project is number 30 in the priority list of the TEN-T European projects. It is going to be a cornerstone of improvement for the inland-waterway network in Western Europe by connecting the Paris area with Belgium, the River Rhine and the whole of Germany. This study started with an in-depth assessment of external and infrastructure costs. The authors: Gabriel Mialocq, Jean-Jacques chaban-delmas Fig. 1: The various freight corridors and related projects in Europe INFRASTRUKTUR External costs Internationales Verkehrswesen (64) 5 | 2012 38 Based on this data, ive internalisation scenarios 5 were developed and assessed by means of a traic model. In addition, complementary assessments were made to cover hypothetical changes in the transport market that are expected but cannot be covered by the traic model alone. This study is unique in that it is the irst indepth analysis of the impacts of the internalisation of external costs applied to a strategic and congested international freight corridor in the European Union. It was both international and multimodal at the same time, so its results may well be of great interest for other parts of Europe where freight transport policy is a major issue. This is particularly the case for the Rhine-Mediterranean corridor. VNF is the organisation in charge of developing the Saône-Moselle/ Saône-Rhine project (SMSR). The SMSR project is a European one and part of the European Union’s Core Network. Its aim is to create a broad-gauge waterway link between the River Rhine and the Mediterranean Sea by constructing a canal between the rivers Saône and Moselle, on the one hand, and between the rivers Saône and Rhine, on the other hand. The project is a European and Mediterranean one. Eight French regions (Alsace, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Bourgogne, Champagne-Ardenne, Rhône-Alpes, Fig. 2: Relative change in tons per mode and relative change in tonne kilometres within the diferent scenarios Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur and Languedoc-Roussillon), at least three German federal states (Saarland, Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate), Switzerland and the Benelux regions are involved in this project. The project is to link the Mediterranean and France directly with the whole of Europe and to provide all of central Europe and the regions concerned with a major, high-capacity transport infrastructure towards the south of Europe and onwards from there by maritime shipping to North Africa and Asia. The study presented here is of particular interest for this project and territory, since it could constitute a key element in the economic and inancial feasibility of this inland-waterway project. Impacts of the various scenarios in the “internalisation of external costs” study The results of the study show that internalisation of external costs has signiicant impacts on freight transport in the Paris-Amsterdam corridor. As expected, the impacts are larger for the scenario that integrates the highest price incentives 6 . In that scenario, the tonnes shipped by inland waterway and rail increase by almost one third and one quarter respectively by 2020. However, the sound Eurovignette scenarios, which are more realistic (and are based on the proposed amendment to the current Eurovignette directive) also show a relatively high modal shift to transport by inland waterway and rail. In terms of tonne-kilometres, the inland waterways and rail gain considerably in all the internalisation scenarios (see igure- 2). Load factors increase on account of higher prices, while road hauliers will try to reduce transport distances. Therefore the vehiclekilometres in road transport decrease even more than the numbers of tonnes and tonne-kilometres. All internalisation scenarios result in considerably lower CO 2 emissions: 17 % to 21 % for the Eurovignette scenarios. Also, air-polluting emissions are reduced in all the scenarios (see igure- 3). The congestion levels are almost halved. The scenarios show considerable reductions of external and infrastructure costs. The modal shift from road to rail and inland waterway, the decrease in transport distances related to price increases and the more eicient loading of vehicles all appear to have positive impacts in reducing external and infrastructure costs. The various scenarios also result in a signiicant increase in tax revenues. With the “Eurovignette extended” scenario (which includes harmonised charging for road, rail and inland waterways - scenario 3), tax revenues are almost doubled (see igure- 4). Interestingly enough, the revenues from Internationales Verkehrswesen (64) 5 | 2012 39 congestion charges are relatively small with all the scenarios. It follows from this that a massive reduction in congestion calls for high charges but limited to a few speciic cases, without much increase of the overall level charged. Strategic prospects derived from the study Implementation of the charging scenarios investigated in this study would require a change in EU legislation. Adopting the Eurovignette Directive-3 in the form in which it is currently proposed would enable Member States to develop some of the most effective pricing measures to emerge from the study. On the other hand, some of the options envisaged by the current legislation are not yet being fully used, such as charging the full infrastructure costs on all roads. In short, this study demonstrates that the internalisation of external costs its perfectly into a policy of improvement for the transport sector in Europe. It helps balance the modal shares between rail, road and inland waterways, to generate additional revenues based on the polluter pays principle and to improve the environmental footprint of transport operations. Finally, it curbs the overall demand for transport. This policy would seem to be more eicient if implemented on a supra-national scale and applied collectively to all modes. Even though it cannot claim to be able to solve the numerous issues of the transport sector alone, it may well constitute a consistent part of a global and sustainable transport policy. discussions on the Saône-Moselle/ Saône-Rhine project • The Saône-Moselle/ Saône-Rhine project is a strategic European one and a key link in connecting France’s network of waterways to the 20 000 kilometres of European inland waterways. In particular, the project aims to link the Mediterranean Basin and the Rhône Basin to several countries and regions in which river transport is well-developed, par- Fig. 3: CO 2 -emission and external costs within the diferent scenarios Fig. 4: Total revenues within the diferent scenarios INFRASTRUKTUR External costs Internationales Verkehrswesen (64) 5 | 2012 40 ticularly Germany and the regions of Saarland, Baden- Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, but also the Benelux countries, Switzerland and, to the south, Spain and Italy, which will also be able to beneit from the opening up of the Mediterranean Basin to Northern and Central Europe. Internationally, the SMSR opens a new route through Europe to carry goods to the Maghreb and other regions in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and China. • Europe is promoting inland waterways especially with the aim of facilitating the free movement of goods, of improving the environmental footprint of the transport sector and of developing a competitive and multimodal European transport network. The main transport corridors, such as the North-South axis, covered by the Rhine-Mediterranean link through the SMSR project are part of this core network as announced in the European Commission’s proposal of October 2011. They will structure industrial and logistic multimodal corridors to ofer competitive, ecological transport services for industry. • The SMSR project is going to promote a new European multimodal transport chain with close ties with the maritime and inland ports. The creation of the Rhine-Mediterranean link through the SMSR link will contribute to the development of a multimodal transport system and increase the potential for trade between diferent modes of transport (seaports and their extended hinterlands, inland ports, multimodal platforms, and so on). The project will integrate several multimodal platforms all along the canal. These inland ports will allow the positive development of multimodal chains of transport, bringing together inlandwaterway, rail and road transport for the beneit of shippers. The major stake for Germany and the regions concerned by the project is to develop cheaper access to the Mediterranean and the maritime ports around the southern arc (Marseille, Sète, Barcelona and Genoa), through a massively expanded, safe, environmentally friendly and competitive transport mode. Thanks to this new inland-waterway corridor, the connections between industries located in regions crossed by the project (Saarland, Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate as well as Rhône-Alpes or Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur, for example) will be improved. This new infrastructure will create a major north-south inland waterway and multimodal corridor that will complement the already existing Rhine corridor and the East-West Danube corridor. It will position Germany and France as the heart of multimodal and inland-waterway transport. • Charging for external costs as a tool for building the European multimodal network The conclusions of the above study are of great interest a far as the Rhine-Mediterranean corridor and SMSR project are concerned. In a nutshell, the indings of the study show that levying rational, multimodal and green charges based on the internalisation of external costs is a suitable means of: - increasing the traic on “alternative modes” such as rail and inland waterways and decreasing road traic - improving the quality of the whole transport chain especially as regards transport’s environmental footprint, and - helping procure inancial resources for priority infrastructure projects. A few years ago, Germany jumped into charging for road use with its “LKW-Maut”. In France, charging tolls for the use of roads, railways and inland waterways is a long-standing practice and well accepted. The next step for positive transport policy and levying charges could be to relect on how such an internalisation of external costs could be implemented along the Rhine-Mediterranean corridor in particular. In 2013, a public debate is going to be organised on the SMSR project. The Benelux countries, Switzerland and Germany as well as the regions concerned are key partners in the project. Several meetings are to be held in the regions concerned and the question of inances will be of primary interest. The internalisation of external costs is a fair, competitive and sustainable way of making it possible to develop interconnecting multimodal infrastructures such as the SMSR. The implementation of multimodal charging based on internalisation of external costs for priority corridors such as the SMSR will be a key point in the development of the SMSR project, in its credibility and in its feasibility. ■ 1 Réseau Ferré de France (RFF) is the French national railway-infrastructure manager. 2 Service Public de Wallonie (SPW) is the ministry in charge of transport for the Walloon region. 3 Waterwegen en Zeekanaal (WenZ) is the manager of inland-waterway infrastructure for the Flemish region. 4 The study was conducted by a consortium composed of CE Delft, Infras, Alenium and Herry. The traic model was run by the Setec-Stratec consortium. 5 5 internalisation scenarios are studied: MSCP scenario (Marginal Social Cost Pricing); Eurovignette Basic scenario (internalisation of external costs only for the road); Eurovignette extended scenario (internalisation of external costs for the three modes); Target oriented scenario (internalisation of external costs for the three modes + higher price signal for the road in order to reach environmental target); Eurovignette Boiteux scenario (internalisation of external costs for the three modes but based on the French “Boiteux” values). 6 The “Target oriented” scenario increases the costs of road more heavily in order to reach the dual target of a high modal shift and a strong decrease in externalities. The “Eurovignette basic” scenario is considered the most realistic in the short term. It increases the cost of road only. The “Eurovignette extended” scenario is more cooperative (internalisation for all three modes). It increases the costs of road more, given that transport by rail and inland waterway produces only a low level of externalities. 7 The Saône-Moselle/ Saône-Rhine project is a major inlandwaterway infrastructure project that aims at linking the Mediterranean Basin and the River Rhône to the Rhine Basin and the whole of continental Europe. 8 Voies Navigables de France (VNF) is the French national manager of inland waterways. It manages 6700 km of rivers and canals and employs 5000 people. It is in charge of developing the network and inland-waterway traic. Gabriel Mialocq Former Head of the Saône-Moselle/ Saône-Rhine project, Voies Navigables de France 8 Research Programme Oicer European Commission, Brussels Gabriel.Mialocq@ec.europa.eu Jean-Jacques chaban-delmas Head of Economics and Finances Voies Navigables de France jeanjacques.chabandelmas@vnf.fr authorS