The IRU says the railway industry has pursued a strategy of calling for increasea in road tolls as a means of moving freight from road to rail.

"For too long many European railways have taken a negative, scapegoat approach to their internal problems and falling market share," said Hubert Linssen IRU General Delegate to the EU. "Instead of blaming road, they should be aiming to succeed on their own merits".

A study conducted by TransCare, on behalf of the IRU concluded that only 1.22% of the volume currently carried by trucks is purely price sensitive thus creating a potential for transferral to rail. The study reveals that even this small shift would only be achieved through price increases of Eur.1 per truck-km on all roads.

But, the effect of such a dramatic increase in road tolls would be disastrous for the EU economy says TransCare. Such an increase would result in a 1.6% rise in operational costs for road transport operators with corresponding inflationary pressures for wider industry and ultimately consumer prices. If these costs were simply absorbed by the road transport sector, the study maintains that the subsequent erosion of profitability would certainly lead to insolvencies within an industry responsible for the direct employment of over 2.5 million EU citizens.

Furthermore, drastically increasing road tolls would create a location disadvantage for EU business with the accompanying weakening of the European position in global competition. Worse, the study comments that in the past the railways have simply used increases in the price of road transport to raise their own rates. This would be at best a high price to pay for a small increase in rail transport - that is not guaranteed anyway.

On the other hand the study demonstrates that a 4.1% shift from road to rail could be achieved by improving quality in rail freight transport. This could see an increase of rail freight of approximately 196 million tonnes per annum.

"Rail no longer has a choice, it has now got to step up to the challenge and opportunity of EU railway liberalisation" said Hubert Linssen. "Hopefully this new study should encourage the railway industry to take a long hard look at itself and decide whether it would not be better emulate the successes of road transport rather than continue to call on regulators to penalise it".