Stimulating European rail freight transport

Abstract

Developing rail freight sector in the EU is desirable from both a political-social point of view and from a market business point of view. Fragmentation in the national railway systems impedes, in many ways, social and economic benefits in the liberalised EU railway market. The need for innovative governance to deal with the fragmentation problems is therefore pressing. This paper sets out an innovative governance framework – MCC for the governing of the European rail freight domain. MCC is problem-driven, market-oriented and corridor-based. It puts the lens on the forming of horizontal transnational collaboration next to and in relation to the existing vertically-structured institutional arrangement. The design of the framework is based on multidisciplinary approach, where theories like multi-level governance, supply chain management, and geographic concepts such as corridors and networks are integrated. This governance framework is then employed to preliminary assess the existing governance practices such as policy guidelines and directives, as well as emergent governance developments such as transport corridors developed from both business and research projects. Three types of governance practices are derived from the assessment – legislative governance, corridor governance and MCC governance. The results contribute to a better policy making to accelerate the growth in the EU rail freight industry and the advancement of strategic management, spatial planning and organisation theory.