Dutch Publication RailPro has written an interesting piece entitled What are the biggest barriers for new entrants on the international train market? There is also a version of the same post in Dutch here. The piece does not distinguish between daytime and night-time trains, but focuses on the challenges common between the two.
It also states for The Netherlands: ‘international trains are in third place in allocating train paths after regional and national traffic. And night trains come only after freight trains’
The piece outlines two major headaches at the start for any new operator – access to infrastructure, and lack of availability of suitable rolling stock. The latter is the issue the Trains for Europe seeks to address.
The RailPro story also highlights the problem of useable trains being scrapped (a problem Jon has addressed further here) rather than being used by other non-incumbent operators.
Photos used in this post
Albert Koch
Talgo München
November 29, 2009
License: Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0)
