Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-09-Speech-2-410"
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"en.20100309.24.2-410"2
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"The train accident in Buizingen on Monday, 15 February was a shocking tragedy and, in the aftermath of this serious accident, several technical and political questions concerning rail safety can be asked.
ERTMS specifications have been available since 2000. A number of pilot projects were carried out between 2000 and 2005. Since 2005, several ERTMS equipped lines have been put into service.
At present, 10 Member States have lines with ERTMS and there are projects ongoing in almost all Member States. In Belgium, for example, the line between Aachen and Liège is equipped and intercity trains running on this line are equipped.
The ERTMS will, therefore, probably coexist with national systems for a period of 20 years. Some Member States will benefit earlier than others from the European system. We see, for example, that the Italian and Spanish high-speed network is already almost fully equipped, that the conventional network of Luxembourg is also almost fully equipped, while in 15 Member States, there are only pilot lines or projects.
It should also be noted that automatic train protection systems are just one element contributing to the safety of the network. Appropriate training, sound maintenance and better protection of level crossings are other important components for safety.
If we take a broader range of safety indicators, overall data show that railway safety standards in Europe are generally very high.
The causes of the accident are not yet fully known and the technical investigation has been launched in accordance with the provisions of the EU Safety Directive. The Belgian investigation body has the responsibility for carrying this out. Two investigators from the European Railway Agency joined the Belgian team in charge of the investigation just a few hours after the accident had occurred.
I would like to stress that, as long as the causes of the accident have not been clarified, it is inappropriate to draw conclusions.
As is all too often the case when rail accidents happen, remarks alleging a link between European rules or regulations and the accidents have been made. I would first like to be very clear on the opening up of the market. Alongside the opening up of the rail freight sector to competition and the establishment of requirements to separate the activities of infrastructure managers and railway undertakings, a stringent regulatory framework was introduced covering rail safety and interoperability. We have carefully monitored this opening up of the rail sector to competition to ensure that it has no negative impact on rail safety, and the indicators clearly show no such impact.
I also see no relationship between the accident and the reasoned opinion we sent to Belgium in 2008 regarding the lack of independence between infrastructure managers and rail undertakings.
Any proposition linking rail safety levels to rail market opening is, in my view, just an excuse to steer the debate away from the true causes of the accident.
The question of the coexistence of national and European train control systems can be put in these terms. More than 20 different national systems are used in Europe today to ensure the safe movement of trains. The incompatibility of the different national systems poses a major problem for international trains because either locomotives have to be changed at each border or they have to be equipped with several onboard systems.
For this reason, a single system for use at European level has been designed and developed and is currently being installed on major international lines and trains in Europe. The system is known as ERTMS, the European Rail Traffic Management System.
As regards the timing, most of the national systems were developed in the early 1980s, but their deployment is a long and costly process. In most of the countries where these systems exist, only part of the national networks and locomotives have been equipped to date, and this partial installation of the equipment took approximately 20 years."@en1
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