On Friday 1 March, the Dutch state secretary for infrastructure addressed a wide range of rail freight policy issues in a letter to the lower house of parliament. While the letter presented some successes, not everyone is happy with its contents, or even its level of truthfulness. “The Second Chamber is being misled,” says Hans-Willem Vroon, director of Dutch rail organisation RailGood.
State secretary Vivianne Heijnen was quick to recognise the importance of the sector in her letter to the Second Chamber, and that might have been music to the ears of the rail freight sector. “Thanks to rail freight, stores and hospitals can be supplied and we can run our companies and industry. Rail freight is an important link in this regard, because it is the cleanest and safest type of freight transportation,” the state secretary wrote.
In an interview with RailFreight.com, director of RailGood Hans-Willem Vroon paints a radically different picture of the policies of the ministry of infrastructure and the letter that the state secretary sent. The letter, with its many irrelevant attachments and misleading information, is a tactic to mislead the new lower house, according to Vroon. “The state secretary is pulling the wool over the eyes of the Second Chamber,” he stressed.
Policy plan
The letter to parliament is an update to the development of a policy plan on rail freight in the Netherlands. The lack of such a policy plan has been a major annoyance for the rail freight sector amid growing chaos and a lack of competitiveness on Dutch tracks.
State secretary Heijnen highlights various issues, possible solutions and successes in the rail freight sector. According to her, millions have been allocated for a rail connection to TEN-T corridors in Belgium, subsidies are in place for a modal shift, negative externalities along the tracks are being reduced and the government improves rail freight competitiveness through subsidies, ERTMS and capacity enhancement.
Misleading
According to Hans-Willem Vroon, the letter is purposefully misleading. Vroon says that the state secretary misrepresents her efforts to stimulate rail freight, omits important contextual information and fails to recognise that key issues are caused by her own policies.
For instance, Vroon says that Heijnen continues to praise her efforts for the modal shift and simultaneously complains about a lack of financing. Meanwhile, the state secretary allocated an additional 120 million euros to national passenger carrier NS. “It’s the world turned upside down,” according to Vroon, because NS receives millions in subsidies without clear results.
At the same time, the rail freight sector suffers from sky-high parking fees. “We don’t pay such excessive fees in Germany or Belgium,” says Vroon. Only the rail sector is forced to pay such fees in the Netherlands. At one point, the government did subsidise infrastructure charges for driving trains due to a distorted market playing field. But while those charges were lower in 2023, infrastructure manager ProRail started raising the infrastructure charges for parking and shunting, ultimately multiplying them by six times.
Then, according to Vroon, when the Dutch track access charges were at comparable levels with Belgium and Germany, the subsidy disappeared. Moreover, only a paltry 22,4 per cent of the sixfold increase in parking fees was subsidised. “120 million euros is freed up for NS, but there is supposedly no money to create a level playing field with road transport and inland shipping,” says Vroon. “And then the state secretary insists that funds for rail freight are scarce while claiming that everything is going according to plan. However, the Dutch rail sector does not see any advantages from ministerial policies.”
Playing around with subsidies
Hans-Willem Vroon strongly denounces the government’s subsidy policies. “If things become cheaper and you take away the subsidies, and the base and competitiveness stay the same, then you return to what it was before. And freight goes back to the road.” Vroon says that subsidies should not be the core of modal shift policy. Rather, the government needs to make sure that there is competitive infrastructure in place. Subsidies are just “pubic patches to hide the mess”, Vroon claims.
In her letter, Heijnen also points out that a number of measures have already been taken to reduce negative noise externalities around a Betuwe Route detour resulting from infrastructure works in Germany that will start in November 2024. “But not all these measures will be ready in time,” says Vroon. What’s worse, the 10 million euros budget allocated for combatting externalities was taken from a subsidy meant to lower track access charges for rail freight. The total subsidy was supposed to amount to 12 million euros.
“We’ve known for 10 years that the Betuwe Route detour was going to happen,” says Vroon. “These measures should have all been finished a long time ago. Because if we’re taking the living environment along the mixed railway routes seriously, then those measures should already have been implemented. And that money shouldn’t come from the rail freight transport stimulus budget either.”
Other issues
Vroon also expresses a lot of criticism about other issues in the letter. The implementation of ERTMS is a mess, and may lead to the loss of more than a third of the locomotive fleet by 2030. Additionally, on the topic of German-Dutch cooperation on rail freight transport, Heijnen states that she consulted with the sector and that there is good collaboration ongoing. “But no one has talked to RailGood,” says Vroon. “RailGood does not see any successes in the German-Dutch cooperation in the field of rail freight transport that will actually strengthen the competitive position of rail freight transport in the coming years.”
Moreover, part of a necessary 400 million investment to increase capacity by allowing 740 metre trains to run on the Dutch network will be spent on securing priority for public transport trains. By law, these trains get priority. “And then the state secretary says that she needs a bag of money. And I’m here thinking: Yes, that is a result of your own choices. I mean, you’re making these laws in The Hague.”
Parliamentary hearing
Thursday 7 March, a parliamentary hearing will take place about the letter. According to Vroon, the letter is purposefully misleading and its many attachments are supposed to overwhelm and confuse the newly installed members of parliament. Vroon states that the new members of parliament will never have enough time to process the information and gain an adequate understanding of the situation of rail freight in the Netherlands.
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