Updates on the Study Shifting Road- to Railway-Traffic in the Region of Ludwigsfelde in Context of the Rail Baltica Growth Corridor

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1 Rail Baltica Growth Corridor Project Meeting 5, Poznan City Hall, Plac Kolegiacki 17, Poznan Annex: List of Participants WELCOME SPEECH According to the Agenda, the meeting was opened at 10:30 by Ms Violetta Wabińska-Chmielewska, Deputy Director for Transport, Department of Municipality and Housing Administration, the City of Poznan. Ms Wabińska-Chmielewska gave a brief presentation on infrastructural developments in Poznan region with the focus made on transport system. WORKSHOP SESSION ON LOGISTICS PILOT Dawid Nijak invited session moderators Ms Malla Paajanen from Aalto University and Mr Albertas Aruna from Competence Center for Intermodal Transport and Logistics of the Vilnius Gediminas Technical University to start the 1st session. Ms Paajanen welcomed the audience and thanked the meeting organizers. After the announcement of the session content Ms Paajanen gave the floor to Mr Aruna who proposed project partners presentations to be shown first and continued with his own presentation and comments on the whole current situation in WP 6. Updates on the Study Shifting Road- to Railway-Traffic in the Region of Ludwigsfelde in Context of the Rail Baltica Growth Corridor The first presentation of the workshop session was given by Ms Grit Kämmerer from the Municipality of Ludwigsfelde who presented the outcomes of the Study Shifting Road- to Railway-Traffic in the Region of Ludwigsfelde in Context of the Rail Baltica Growth Corridor. The study was built upon the location analysis covering market studies, economic relations and transport Infrastructure of Ludwigsfelde and Großbeeren in order to examine how the cities work together regarding multimodal connections. According to the study the modern industrial and logistics location of Ludwigsfelde has a strong economic structure, especially in the cluster of automotive, air and space technologies, logistics, metal mechatronics and nutrition. Ludwigsfelde s road and railway connection of high quality make favourable conditions for the settlement of new companies. Special attention was drawn to the Großbeeren s Freight Village, where logistics companies and logisticsoriented service companies with different orientation (transport and forwarding agencies, warehousing, logistics services, telecommunications) have settled. The economic strengths of the location are pointed out by the logistics and rail transport technology clusters. The Freight Village can be reached by road and rail and has a combined multimodal terminal. INIS (Intermodal Node Information System) has been improved: the Brandenburg Viewer was connected to the system and additional language options were introduced. Special attention was paid to the visualisation 1 / 12

2 of infrastructure, text search for locations, detailed description of railway access and linkage to further sources providing detailed information about locations. The structure of the existing INIS is transferable to all project partners and can be used for creation their own similar systems. Development of an international portal to connect national systems can also be taken into consideration. Further steps could include INIS marketing for broader international use and studying system s prospective on the international market. The discussion of Ms Kämmerer s presentation was initiated by Mr Aruna s question about the responsibility division between terminals and logistics service providers. Mr Olli-Pekka Hilmola from Lappeenranta Technical University commented on the possibilities of transport companies to find new ways to gain profit by providing information about themselves. Intermodal conditions in Poznań and Wielkopolska region The session was continued with the presentation of intermodal conditions in Poznań and Wielkopolska region made by Marcin Foltyński from the Institute of Logistics and Warehousing. At the moment, Poland has only three logistic centers that meet Western European standards: Śląskie Centrum Logistyki S.A. w Gliwicach, Euroterminal Sławków Sp. z o.o., Centrum Logistyczno Inwestycyjne Poznań (CLIP Logistics Sp. z o.o.). Established by local initiatives, the centers are not supported by the state. Their organisational structure, development and logistic infrastructure components differ a lot. The centers do not cooperate with each other. There are no steps taken towards the development of the national intermodal logistic network as a general master plan for Poland has not been created. Mostly on papers, there are several projects regarding the construction of new multimodal terminals. For instance, Logistics Center Poznań Franowo is planned at the 105 hectare site in south - east of Poznan benefiting the express road Poznań Katowice and the railway transshipment station Poznań Franowo, where PKP Cargo is planning to build a container terminal. The center is planned to become the Special Economic Zone, which will provide an incentive for potential investors. Another project Wielkopolskie Centrum Logistyczne (WCL) offers the infrastructure prepared for the logistics company profile and is waiting for further investments. Currently WCL is a warehouse park with no connection to rail. However, due to the planned development of infrastructure (e.g. connection to the intermodal terminal) and growth of freight flows in the region intermodal investments are considered. The number of container terminals in Poland has increased from 20 to 32 during the past 7 years. In Poznań Aglomeration, there are 4 transport operators (Polzug, CargoSpeed, ATC Rail, Spedcont) and 5 container terminals. Cargosped terminal in Kobylnica faces certain pressure caused by the noise disturbance of local inhabitants who live near to the terminal. Spedcont terminal in Poznan can no longer operate in its current location. 2 / 12

3 The attractiveness of the RBGC corridor can be increased by the cooperation of individual logistics centers and container terminals which would result in creation of the service for global freight flows. Poznań agglomeration area infrastructure is designed to serve intermodal transport. Basing on the parametric analysis of the intermodal terminals and logistics center in Poznań, it is recommended to invite the container terminal POLZUG in Gądki to the WP 6 of the Rail Baltica Growth Corridor project. The analysis also showed the necessity of closer cooperation of representatives of regional authorities, intermodal operators and shippers, as the provisions in trade agreements between shippers, forwarders and intermodal operators prevent complete identification of freight flows in the analysed area. Possibilities for international cooperation of logistics clusters Mr Jorma Härkönen presented the Logistics Centre Cluster of Finland (LIMOWA) that is targeted at the development of the modern logistics centers and models for their design, construction, development and operation. Being part of Finland s governmental Centre of Expertise Programme, LIMOWA aims to promote the availability of development resources and financing for private logistics companies and stimulate the improvement of the logistics infrastructure. Furthermore, the cluster aims to lobby political decision makers in order to enhance the international cooperation and Finland s export activities. After the LIMOWA overview, Mr Härkönen asked if there is enough willingness for international cooperation in other RBGC countries. For instance, in Germany, Großbeeren is opened for many transport operators and represents the international benchmark of a good quality. As some really good developments took place in Poland and particularly in Poznan, there would be an opportunity to found logistics cluster covering the whole Poland though current Polish ILIN cluster initiative is not supported by the government. Mr Härkönen continued with a brief overview of Finnish logistics centers. It was underlined that export/import activities are mainly carried out by the sea ports excluding Russian direction. For example, in Helsinki, logistics centers are concentrated in Vuosaari harbour and Helsinki-Vantaa airport. The focal point of Vuosaari harbour is the southern direction. Among inland terminals the most remarkable ones are located in Kouvola (serving the eastern direction) and Tampere (covering all northern directions). So the proposal for RBGC project would be Vuosaari in Helsinki as well as multimodal terminals in Tampere and Kouvola. In Finland, containers are carried on rail mainly in the Finland-Russia traffic. There are not yet any established domestic container transport systems on rail. The customer base of Finnish state-owned VR Transpoint, who is responsible for the rail cargo transports, includes primarily 10 of the biggest industrial companies representing paper, metal and mining sectors. Another proposal to the WP 6 is to form an expert group consisting of one expert from each RBGC country. There are already names from the Northern part of the transport corridor (Finland, Estonia, Latvia) and representatives from Lithuania, Poland and Germany are invited to join the group. The focal point of the working group would be the facilitation of preconditions for east-west transport corridors to meet northsouth rail corridors. 3 / 12

4 The intermediate results of Work Package 6 and stakeholders partnership The session 1 was summarized by Mr Albertas Aruna who presented on the intermediate results of WP 6 and WP 4.4 and underlined the need to finalize the vision of stakeholders partnership. First, the main theses for carrying out the research were discussed. Causing main logistics costs, freight transportation consists of the following stages: collection from shippers (last miles), terminal activity, line transportation, network process management. In all these stages, the owner of the property and the operator acting on the basis of the contracts with the owner should be assigned. The owner of the infrastructure in international trade logistics in the countries of Eastern Europe is usually a state institution, which shares belong to the state, or other entities (subsidiary companies) established by them or with capital of private sector entities of other countries. Freight corridor is formed by the principal route including equipment, terminals, sideways, shunting yards, marshalling yards, bypasses and sections nearby significant destinations. In case of RBGC, principal route belongs to EU TEN-T core network, and it is the object of state planning and EU financing. At the same time, additional components to the principal route intermodal and container terminals, access railways, siding yards, train formation activity, warehouses, access roads or streets are mainly the objects of regional or local territorial planning. Therefore, the influence of local level authorities is very significant. A part of RBGC principal route is included in EU regulated Freight railway corridor No. 8, and in 2013 it is planned to carry out a corridor transport study as the main document for management of the corridor (Kaunas Rotterdam). The study will mainly deal with improvement of the principal route and distribution of capacities among transport operators. According to EC Regulation for freight railway corridor, Management Board has to form separate Working Groups for considering problems of additional corridor components, to be specific, intermodal terminals; In the description of RBGC, specific definition of PILOT LOGISTICS is not provided. This will be a result of WP 4.4 activity and will be presented as WP 6 action plan. This can be interpreted as a starting point for creation of freight transport supporting working group that would become a constituent part of corridor management process as representative of Rail Baltica in freight corridor No. 8. Should the state of intermodal terminals as well as their interrelations and the process of last mile be analyzed in the course of Logistics pilot, the main stakeholders would be operators of intermodal container terminals, railway transport operators, international intermodal operators and groups of local forwarders. Logistics pilot group should be formed of logistics components groups of Ludwigsfelde, Poznan, Lodz, Warsaw, Kaunas transport region, Riga, Tallinn and Southern Finland. Such propositions would be presented as draft conclusion of WP 4.4. The quick overview of the multimodal terminals proposed to the WP 6 reveals following comments. In Lithuania, Kaunas has good connections to Russia, Vilnius is important because of public logistics centers and Sestokai offers the connection to different railway systems. 4 / 12

5 In Latvia, Riga is not a very successful proposal as the distance to Kaunas for rail is too short. Furthermore, logistics providers and transport authorities in Latvia do not express their opinions about carrying cargo to Central Europe. However, Riga is an attractive point in east-west axis. As for Jelgava, it has no railway infrastructure, neither do the container terminals. Tallinn is highly depended on Finnish freight flows, thus Tallinn port of Muga and Vuosaari harbour in Helsinki are considered as a double point. Shifting cargo from wheels to rail in RB area is not quite attractive for logistics operators regarding prices and delivery times. Nevertheless, RB is interesting for maritime transport, so the service product would be from Helsinki to Berlin in 61 hours. Finally, Mr Aruna came up with the suggestion to appoint to the WP 6 group the experts who would have wide knowledge about logistics industry in their countries. Mr Härkönen from Finnish Logistics Centre Cluster LIMOWA, Illimar Paul from the Estonian Logistics Cluster and Marcin Foltyński from Poznan, Poland, were suggested. Latvian partners and the municipality of Ludwigsfelde will nominate their representatives and the City of Warsaw will hire an expert as well. Partners are encouraged to comment this list. Another important further step would be the formulating of a new service product of transport logistics by each partner. In the end of the session, the participation of Byalostok in the logistics pilot was discussed on the initiative of Olli-Pekka Hilmola from the Lappeenranta University of Technology. According to Mr Aruna the project should take into account the existing infrastructure until 2015, and as goods are not going via rail from North to Warsaw, Bialystok could not make concrete proposals at the moment. However, the City of Byalostok was included in the expert group of WP 6. WORKSHOP SESSION ON RAIL BALTICA PERSPECTIVES Workshop session on Rail Baltica Perspectives was moderated by Mr Olli Keinänen from the City of Helsinki and Martin Reents from Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment, Berlin. From the Rail Baltica Perspective towards Rail Baltica Action Programmes Martin Reents opened the session with a brief overview of the workshop s content. It was suggested that first the partners will present the results of the work accomplished since the previous meeting. The presentations will be followed by a discussion about Rail Baltica Action Programmes and the final conference planning. The meeting with the lead partner on March 2012 resulted in the elaboration of Rail Baltica main political messages that are: increasing the cohesion of the Eastern Baltic Sea Region, supporting green transport and capitalising global trade flows. Next, project partners need to develop Rail Baltica Action Programmes which are a subject for discussion on 2nd series of interregional roundtable conferences in order to identify node-related strategies. In this respect, it is necessary to decide who would represent and identify the node-related strategies and if it is possible to nominate political stakeholders and decision-makers (mayors, vice-mayors) as well as lead 5 / 12

6 experts from each node (RBGC city) so that political stakeholders would contribute to the final conference and lead experts to Rail Baltica Action Programmes. The final conference is expected to deliver to national ministries and European stakeholders the following message: specified through Rail Baltica Action Programmes, Rail Baltica Growth Strategy gives relevant advantages to the corridor cities. The precondition for that is the removal of infrastructural and institutional bottlenecks on national levels. The final conference is proposed to be held in Berlin either or The formal part would take two days: the first day is for the project partners and and the second one for high-level representatives and external guests. This would be followed by a weekend train trip to Warsaw, continuing to Sestokai and further to Kaunas (by a special train), and a public event in Kaunas with further transportation to Helsinki and St. Petersburg for selected participants. After a brief discussion, it was preliminary agreed that the final conference would consist of four stages: the 1 st day for internal conference, the 2 nd day for high-level representatives, the 3 rd day for joint trip to Warsaw and finally, the 4 th day for public event in Kaunas. Preliminary, it was agreed that the event should take place in June 2013 so that there would rest several months for accounting and final reporting. The reasons for holding the conference in June are that there will be no need to apply for postponing as the project ends in September 2013, June suits fine the high-level representatives from Berlin and it is a good time to deliver political messages and raise EU funding not only for Rail Baltica but also for the partner cities. At the moment the preparation of political messages is on full speed and the sooner they are delivered the more chances there are to impact the decision making processes. Taking into account the date of European Parliament meeting in 2013 on the week 24 and upcoming holidays it was decided to hold the final conference on June, Rail Baltica Growth Strategy Mr Keinänen highlighted that Rail Baltica is having a significant support as a political project. At the same time Rail Baltica Growth Corridor project received regional and local acknowledgment. The remaining challenge is to attract the interest of businesses and consumers to the Rail Baltica railway project and fill the gaps in cooperation between EU, states, regional and local level representatives. At the moment, low credibility of Rail Baltica is based on its unsatisfactory integration to the rest of transport networks. RBGC project is working on proving the multilevel support to the Rail Baltica. Besides organising interregional roundtables and implementing logistics and connectivity pilots, in the nearest future the project will hold a couple of important events, i.e. the political meeting with members of the Transport Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels in November, 2012 as well as the transnational Conference in St. Petersburg on October Increasing cohesion of the Eastern Baltic Sea Region is seen as one of the main political goals of the project at its current stage. Thus, RBGC is improving access of the corridor countries located on the periphery of 6 / 12

7 the European Union to European markets by enhancing a new RB gateway directly correlating with the hub functions of the Polish railway system. RBGC is also addressing the issues of low level of cooperation of some Eastern BSR countries. Currently, not all RBGC countries are doing business with their neighbours, so another task of Rail Baltica is to turn the competition inside Eastern BSR region into cooperation by promoting North-South railways as a priority mode of freight transport and therefore to strengthen the opportunities for joint business perspectives of the Baltic states. As a part of Baltic-Adriatic TEN-T Core Network Corridor No 1 Rail Baltica have a high priority for freight transport and is supposed to increase the share of rail in corridor countries in Northern Europe where road and sea are still the dominant modes of transport. Railway connection allows reducing green-house gas emissions and making freight flows more energy efficient. Moreover, the focal point of Rail Baltica is to connect global trade flows together. As St. Petersburg and Moscow with their logistical hubs (Trans-Siberian Railway and Northern Sea Route) are the most promising markets of goods and services Eastern Baltic Sea Region should provide the transit opportunities for global freight flows running from Asia to Europe. RB regional nodes offer such advantages as access to the Northern BSR (Tallinn/Helsinki), access to the BSR and Moscow (Riga is the nearest node to Moscow within the European internal market), Kaliningrad and Belarus directions (Klaipeda/Kaunas/Vilnius) and access to Central and South-Europe (Warsaw/Lodz) and therefore, complementary strategies should support the optimised use of regional nodes advantages. Recent developments in Helsinki/Tallinn/St. Petersburg section, e.g. the revival of passenger transport between Helsinki and St. Petersburg due to the Allegro train and the run of Helsinki-Tallinn Transport Plan projects in Helsinki area, are good examples of positive changes in Eastern BSR. The cooperation with Russia looks especially promising as according to Mr Olli Pekka Hilmola s comment joining the EU trade system and WTO membership will increase the capacity of St- Petersburg port from 2 to 6 mln containers. Possibilities for short-term improvements within Rail Baltica Growth Corridor Mr Jürgen Murach from Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment, Berlin, addressed a meeting with the idea that Rail Baltica implementation cannot wait till 2030, and some improvements should be realized before Up to now some short term improvements inside the RBGC corridor were done. Train connection on the line Kaunas Vilnius was modernized; also the example of Helsinki St. Petersburg connection is worth noticing. Concrete proposal for further examples of short term improvements within RBGC corridor would be a better accessibility of Łodz to Poznań and Berlin using the existing infrastructure, reactivating of the connecting bend in Suwałki, connecting bend in Olecko and grade crossing with barriers in the north of Białystok and replacement of the interface AC/DC between PLK and DB Netz from border line to Frankfurt / Odra passenger station. 7 / 12

8 The corridor section Lodz-Warsaw is quickly developing: the modernisation of fast tracks (160 km/h) is to be finished before 2013, purchase of modern railcars with high capacity is supposed to be done before 2014 and the reconstruction of Łódz Fabryczna station as new underground railway node will be completed before2015. In the meantime travelling to all other directions is less attractive due to the very few direct connections, non-optimized timetables and long travel times. For example, railway trip from Lodz to Kutno in 1990 took 50 minutes with average speed 83 km/h; and in 2012 the same trip takes already 1 hour 21 minutes with average speed 58 km/h. In order to improve the situation, regional authorities and long-distance service operators could optimise the correspondence of the connections from Lodz to Poznan in Kutno and infrastructure operators task would be to improve the quality of Kutno as change station. Thus, the current 1 hour 20 minutes could be reduced to 0:43 hours by upgrading the connection to speed-level 120 km/h and, accordingly, to 0:31 hours by upgrading the connection to speed-level 160 km/h. Reduction of waiting time in Kutno station could save up to 0:45 hours. Time table optimization and track improvements together are able to reduce travel time up to 90 minutes without expensive investments. Investments in new rail connecting bends to avoid the change of direction in Suwalki and Olecko and investments in new rail crossing barriers could reduce travel time between Bialystok and Lithuania for minutes. For the time being, Polish regional DC motor coaches cannot go to Frankfurt/Oder and connections to German Regional-Express towards Berlin and airport station are not possible due to the technical ambiguities in interface of electrical systems. In this case, learning from best practices, e.g. the line Cologne Aachen Brussels, where electric system can be switched at the platform during the stop in Aachen so that all Belgian regional trains would be integrated in the German regional express system. After the case examples Mr Murach concentrated on final conference structure planning. As it was discussed earlier, the final conference is planned to be held middle July The first stage on July 13, Thursday, will contain the presentations of final results of all Work Packages and further discussion. June 14, Friday, is reserved for political discussion with high-level representatives and decision-makers (mayors, members of parliaments, representatives from national transport ministries, railway companies, chambers of commerce) that would be approached with messages regarding the priority of railway in transport policies of all member states of RBGC, including of Rail Baltica to the national infrastructure plans and elaboration of catalogues of Rail Baltica route short and long term improvements and the future vision. June 15, Saturday: A special train trip from Berlin to Kaunas for the participants of the final conference and high-level representatives that demonstrates the possibility to reach Baltic States from Berlin in one day if some little improvements would be realized. Besides key persons mentioned above, the management of railway companies, tourist agencies and logistics operators as well as NGOs supporting rail and environment are also invited to join the trip. Special attention should be paid to involving media representatives in the event, as at current stage the mass media tends to give a grey picture of Rail Baltica developments. It was agreed that the project partners from all RBGC countries shall first invite local decision-makers and others stakeholders and then, if there are enough names on the list, request the presence of journalists on the event. 8 / 12

9 Brief updates on WP 1 and WP 2 Mr Sakari Saarinen from the City of Helsinki reported about the updates within Work Packages 1 and 2. The reporting of indicators for common results and priority specific results will be done by the lead partner, so other project partners can leave them unfilled. However, every partner is requested to report on publicity and communication indicators for each reporting period providing value and explanation to every relevant indicator. Though some of the indicators might not be relevant on project partner level, it is crucial to give target values and explanations to all reported actions. Several promotional initiatives have been undertaken in the WP 2. In particular, business gifts (pens and memory sticks) with RBGC logo were produced and they are now available to all project partners on request. Furthermore, new project brochures will be published in middle June All promotional materials can be ordered from the lead partner. Project website is continuously experiencing content updates. Layout changes are scheduled to the late summer All partners are invited to send Rail Baltica related news from their countries to be published on the RBGC web-pages. Next visibility action will be the representation of RBGC project in Baltic Development Forum Summit and Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for BSR, June in Copenhagen. Connectivity pilot status report At the end of the session Mr Jona Kundel from the VBB Public Transport Authority Berlin-Brandenburg made a brief overview of the connectivity pilot. The ferry data integration to the travel planner is in progress. Up to now the links to train stations were integrated into the ferry data and current state can be seen at the VBB s test server For the full integration of the ferry data into the system it is necessary to add the information about exact check-in & check-out times for different harbours, connections to the railway stations, travel time and mean of transport used to get to the train station from the ferry stop, etc. Among the next steps the integration of Finnish travel planning system was outlined. The question is which service provider hsl.fi or matka.fi (journey.fi) will come in on the project. The work on connecting North-West Russia to the connectivity pilot has been initiated and the main current issue is to transliterate all names to Cyrillic letters. *** Next project meeting will be organized back-to-back with RBGC Transnational Roundtable Meeting II in St. Petersburg, / 12

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