Table of contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Purpose of the evaluation 1.2 Scope of the evaluation 2 Background to the intervention 2.1 Wider policy context 2.2 Description of the intervention and its objectives 2.3 Baseline and points of comparison 3 Implementation / state of Play 3.1 Description of the current situation 3.2 Relevant changes in the EU legal framework 4 Method 4.1 Short description of methodology 4.2 Limitations and robustness of findings 5 Analysis and answers to the evaluation questions 5.1 Relevance 5.2 Effectiveness 5.3 Efficiency 5.4 Coherence

5.5 EU added value 6 Conclusions Annex I Procedural information 1 Lead DG, Decide Planning/CWP references 2 Organisation and timing 3 Exceptions to the better regulation guidelines 4 Consultation of the RSB (if applicable) 5 Evidence, sources and quality Annex II Stakeholder consultation Annex III Methods and analytical models Annex IV Intervention logic Annex V Evaluation questions Annex VI Costs and EU funding for the rail freight corridors for

the period 2012-2020 Annex VII Supporting material 1 (General) objectives adopted by the governance structures of the corridors 2 Governance structure 3 Performance of rail freight services 123 4 Maps of International rail freight traffic on the EU Rail Network 127 5 Management of disruptions and the designation of ‘diversionary lines’ 138 6 Overview of activities carried out at network level 144

7 Measures to implement the provisions on traffic management

(Articles 16 and 17 of the Regulation) 146 8 Roles, functions and tasks carried out at network level 150 9 Pre-arrangement of the infrastructure capacity offer 153 10 Estimating the impact of shorter travel times facilitated by pre-arranged train paths on rail freight traffic 155 11 Intermodal transport services involving rail freight: players, processes and interfaces involved 158 12 Situation of international rail freight traffic during the covid-19 pandemic 163 13 Relevance analysis of investment planning, coordination of works and designation of corridors 166 14 Coherence analysis of investment planning, coordination of works and the framework of capacity allocation 169 15 Analysis of the coherence of the Rail Freight Corridors Regulation with other legal acts 171 16 Dwelling times of freight trains at RFC border crossings 178 Annex VIII Overview of costs – benefits identified in the evaluation 184 Glossary Term or acronym Meaning or definition CEF Connecting Europe Facility CEF Regulation Regulation (EU) No 1316/2013 CID Corridor information document CIP RailNetEurope’s Customer Information Platform CNC(s) Core network corridor(s) Combined Transport Directive Directive 92/106/EEC ECCO Efficient Cross Corridor Organisation ERA European Union Agency for Railways ERTMS European Rail Traffic Management System GHG Greenhouse gases GIS Geographic information system Governance Directive Directive (EU) 2016/2370 ICM International Contingency Management IM(s) Rail infrastructure manager(s) INEA Innovation and Networks Executive Agency ISSG Inter-service steering group KPI(s) Key performance indicator(s) OPC Open public consultation PaP(s) Pre-arranged train path(s) PMO Permanent management office PRIME Platform of Rail Infrastructure Managers in Europe Railway Interoperability Directive Directive (EU) 2016/797 RAG(s) Advisory group(s) made up of railway undertakings interested in the use of a rail freight corridor Recast Directive (see also Single European Railway Area Directive) Directive 2012/34/EU RFC(s) Rail freight corridor(s) RMMS Rail market monitoring RNE RailNetEurope RU(s) Railway undertaking(s) SERAC Single European Railway Area Committee Single European Railway Area Directive (see also Recast Directive) Directive 2012/34/EU TAG(s) Advisory group(s) made up of the managers and owners of the terminals of a rail freight corridor TEN-T Trans-European Transport Network TEN-T Guidelines Regulation (EU) No 1315/2013 TIS RailNetEurope’s Train Information System tkm See tonne-kilometre. Tonne-kilometre A unit of measure of freight transport which represents the transport of one tonne of goods (including packaging and tare weights of intermodal transport units) by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometre. TTR Timetable redesign project 1Introduction 1.1Purpose of the evaluation This evaluation aims to establish if Regulation (EU) No 913/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 September 2010 concerning a European rail network for competitive freight (hereafter ‘the Rail Freight Corridors Regulation’ or ‘the Regulation’) is still fit for its purpose, that is making rail freight more competitive with other modes of transport via the establishment and organisation of international rail corridors. The evaluation assesses if the requirements of the Regulation were adequate for achieving its intended effects and if the Regulation was implemented to the fullest extent. To this end, it identifies in qualitative and quantitative terms direct and side effects of the establishment and the organisation of the rail freight corridors, as well as the costs and benefits for the stakeholders.

The evaluation relies on the data and analysis provided by an evaluation support study carried out in the course of 2019 and 2020 (hereafter ‘the evaluation support study’). It takes a broader look at the challenges rail freight is facing, in order to put into context the results of the measures envisaged by the Regulation. Increasing the attractiveness of rail freight service and shifting inland freight from road to rail is an essential component of the EU’s efforts to make the transport system more resilient, clean and sustainable, as outlined in the 2001 and the 2011 White Papers on transport - Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area. The Commission reaffirmed this objective in its 2019 European Green Deal Communication that provides its vision on how to transform EU’s economy and society to put it on a more sustainable path. The Commission also set out a 90% reduction in transport emissions by 2050 and put forward the sustainable and smart mobility strategy to achieve this target. Since the entry into force of the Regulation, the Commission’s services have regularly monitored the progress in achieving its goals. In 2016, the European Court of Auditors published a report on the implementation of the Regulation, which concluded that ‘the performance of rail freight transport in the EU remains unsatisfactory’. The 2018 Commission report on the application of the Regulation indicated that despite some positive developments, limited progress was made on core issues such as rail capacity allocation for freight. In February 2019, the Commission published a Roadmap outlining its plan for this evaluation. 1.2Scope of the evaluation The evaluation considers the period from the establishment of the first rail freight corridors under the Regulation in 2013 until 2019, and in some cases includes analysis based on developments in 2020. It covers all established rail freight corridors, i.e. all Member States involved in the rail freight corridors, namely all except for Ireland, Cyprus and Malta. For parts of the evaluation information on third countries involved in the rail freight corridors (Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) was also analysed. The evaluation covers all provisions of the Regulation. It elaborates on the five evaluation criteria required by the European Commission's Better regulation guidelines, namely relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, coherence and EU added value. 2Background to the intervention 2.1Wider policy context Transport of goods by rail encountered difficulties for decades for many reasons, both external and internal to the sector: changes in industrial structure, the development of alternative and efficient modes of transport, new logistic requirements on the part of companies, lack of interoperability of rail and lack of access for freight trains to rail infrastructure. The Commission pursued an active policy for the revitalisation of rail transport based on the progressive opening up of transport services to competition (effective for all freight since 1 January 2007) and the development of the interoperability of rail systems. The launch of the Lisbon strategy and its environmental dimension raised the importance of the environment, climate change and energy policy. In addition, EU’s Strategy for Sustainable Development stressed the need for a modal shift from road to rail. In 2001 the Commission came forward with a White Paper on Transport and reviewed its mid-term results in 2006. The Commission proposed the creation of a clean and efficient transport system and to concentrate on the development of ‘co-modality’, that is the optimal use of all modes of transport, in combination or otherwise. In 2009, after decades of decline, the market share of rail freight transport reached a record low of 15.7% of total land transport. The economic crisis triggered by the financial collapse in 2007-2008 hit rail freight harder than any other mode of transport. During the following 11 years (2009-2019), rail freight modal share in EU 27 land transport slightly increased and has been rather stable around 18% while road modal share increased to over 75%, with significant differences across countries and along rail corridors. In the meantime, the territory of the EU grew considerably following the enlargement of 2004 and 2007, thus further increasing the potential role of rail freight for the Union’s transport policy, as it is generally more economically feasible to transport goods on rail over distances above 300 km. Prior to the adoption of the Regulation, Directive 2001/14/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2001 on the allocation of railway infrastructure capacity and the levying of charges for the use of railway infrastructure and safety certification laid down rules on cooperation between national infrastructure managers in view of facilitating international transport of goods by rail.

Against this background, in 2008, the Commission proposed a regulation concerning a European rail network for competitive freight. The original impact assessment tested three options: –1 – Keep the status quo; –2 – Expand the ERTMS initiative to other corridors by disseminating best practices, systematically verify the application of existing legislation (concerning international cooperation and the establishment of performance regimes, in particular); encourage Member States and infrastructure managers to cooperate more and to create corridors on a voluntary basis; –3 – Propose a new legislative act. The Commission proposed an intervention at EU level in the form of a regulation (option 3). The proposal underwent considerable amendments during the legislative process and the Regulation was finally adopted in 2010. 2.2Description of the intervention and its objectives Most recently in the European Green Deal, as reconfirmed in last year’s sustainable and smart mobility strategy, EU transport policy set the objective of shifting freight from road to more sustainable modes of transport. For this to happen rail needed to become more competitive, i.e. it had to increase its productivity and improve its performance by becoming more regular, more punctual and faster. Rail faced and is still facing a changing freight market. Freight transport in the EU increased by 10% between 2011 and 2017. While road freight grew, rail freight stagnated between 2011 (422 billion tonne-kilometres) and 2017 (421 billion tkm). The main reason is the decline of bulk cargo (a traditional rail commodity). For instance, the transport of coal and refined petrol decreased by 12% on average in the EU for that period and the effect was even more pronounced in coal-producing Member States. This trend follows the steep decline of coal production and the more moderate reduction of petroleum products consumption in the EU (see Figure 1 ). Figure 1Production of hard coal in the EU Recent figures show that commodity groups with high rail affinity continue to decline in volume while groups with traditionally low rail affinity are growing (see Figure 2 ). Figure 2Commodity groups with high and low rail transport affinity Source: Rail Freight Forward, 2016: 30 by 2030. Rail Freight Strategy to Boost Modal Shift While trade in traditional rail commodities is declining, transport for smaller consignments and containerised goods is increasing. The most dynamic freight transport segment is courier, express, parcel commodities with growth rates of about 10% per year, which has very low affinity to rail. Intermodal transport is the only segment for rail freight transport, which has been continuously increasing, thus making rail freight competitiveness even more dependent on efficient cooperation with other transport modes. Intermodal transport by rail is suffering from the weaknesses of rail freight performance more than bulk cargo, as punctuality and reliability are much more important when organising several legs of a trip versus using only rail. The data shows that rail has become increasingly exposed to competition from other modes, in particular road, as the commodity structure in the EU is changing. This means that some of its specific advantages (being able to carry heavier loads and provide safer transport of dangerous goods) became less relevant and rail has to compete increasingly in terms of quality (speed and reliability) and price. This makes a shift to rail freight all the more difficult. Furthermore, freight faces a growing competition for access to rail capacity with passenger rail. Total rail traffic grows steadily and, as freight is stagnating, passenger traffic is responsible for most of the growth at EU level. In terms of train kilometres, over 80% of the traffic is passenger transport. The growing competition for capacity is illustrated by the increase in the length of lines declared congested from 700 km in 2012 to close to 2 300 km in 2016, including more than 1 300 km of lines designated to the rail freight corridors (see Annex VII, Section 3.3). The mid-term review of the 2001 White Paper on transport suggested that to improve rail’s competitiveness the following structural obstacles for the rail industry needed to be addressed: 1.technical barriers such as the low levels of interoperability, the lack of mutual recognition of rolling stock and products;

2.the weak coordination of infrastructure and interconnection of IT systems that infrastructure managers use to allocate and manage rail infrastructure capacity; 3.lack of profitability of the business model based on single wagons loads. These obstacles (with the exception of single wagon loads), were addressed by a number of EU instruments. The Regulation addresses only some of them and not at the same level of detail. Interoperability, IT systems, infrastructure planning are addressed to a rather limited extent, even though they have a big impact on the performance of rail freight transport. The impact assessment accompanying the Commission proposal for the Regulation identified lack of cooperation with regard to the infrastructure capacity for rail freight, and in particular international freight, as an issue that had not been sufficiently addressed by EU legislation at the time. Therefore, the Regulation focused on this by addressing the following problems: ·Lack of priority of rail freight, in comparison to passenger traffic, with regard to operations on mixed-traffic lines and the choice of investment. ·The lack of cooperation, both in terms of investment and the operational management of infrastructure. ·The lack of coordination between the rail infrastructure part and the terminals in general (at ports, on the ground or at marshalling yards), which resulted in poor punctuality of freight trains. ·Insufficient transparency related to the information provided to infrastructure users, which was perceived as limiting the access to transport markets favouring incumbent railway undertakings. To address the problems, the Regulation set the following objectives: ·Objective 1: Improve coordination between infrastructure managers, Member States, railway undertakings and terminal owners/operators, both between these different groups of actors and – within the groups – across borders; ·Objective 2: Coordinate and plan investments to ensure that infrastructure capacities and capabilities available along the corridor meet the needs of international rail freight traffic, including as regards interoperability; ·Objective 4: Guarantee international freight trains access to adequate infrastructure capacity, recognizing the needs of other types of transport, including passenger transport; ·Objective 3: Improve operational conditions for international rail freight services, in particular by coordinating traffic management along the corridors, including in the event of disturbance and monitor the performance of rail freight services on the corridors; ·Objective 5: Facilitate the use of rail infrastructure for international rail freight services and support fair competition between rail freight service providers; ·Objective 6: Improve intermodality along the corridors. To achieve the objectives, the Regulation mandated Member States with the establishment of rail freight corridors and provided the corridors with a set of dedicated procedures. Rail freight corridors are defined in the Regulation as all designated railway lines, including railway ferry lines, on the territory of or between Member States, and, where appropriate, European third countries, linking two or more terminals, along a principal route and, where appropriate, diversionary routes and sections connecting them, including the railway infrastructure and its equipment and relevant rail services. The Regulation provides for six main areas of action for stakeholders: A.the geographical definition and the establishment and modification of rail freight corridors; B.the governance of rail freight corridors at the policy (Member States) and operational levels (infrastructure managers and other operational stakeholders);

C.the production of a set of planning, programming, information and reporting documents to steer and align investments and works along the rail freight corridors, inform operational stakeholders and monitor performance; D.the development and use of tools and procedures of preferential capacity allocation along the rail freight corridors (pre-tactical phase); E.the development of procedures for coordination of traffic management (tactical phase) and F.the supervision by regulatory bodies. The following analysis makes reference to these areas, in particular when presenting the analysis on the five evaluation criteria in Chapter 5. The governance of the freight corridors is the primary actor in implementing the measures required by the Regulation and therefore, the main responsible for achieving the Regulation’s objectives. The governance consists of: ·executive boards, consisting of representatives of the public authorities of the Member States; ·management boards, consisting of representatives of the infrastructure managers and the allocation bodies; ·advisory groups to the management boards (one for the railway undertakings and one for the terminal owners and operators). The executive boards’ main task is to provide an impetus for the management boards by setting general objectives and monitoring their implementation. The management boards are the main responsible for implementing the measures envisaged in the Regulation. The advisory groups ensure the consultation of infrastructure users, the so-called applicants, and partners in the logistics chain, the terminals along the corridors. The Regulation provides for a number of tools and measures ( Table 1 ). The most prominent tools of the Regulation are the ‘one-stop shop’, ‘pre-arranged train paths and ‘reserve capacity’. The one-stop shop was supposed to contribute mainly to the objective of facilitating the use of infrastructure, by providing railway undertakings and other applicants with a single point of contact as regards infrastructure capacity. Eliminating the need to contact individual infrastructure managers for the allocation of capacity was expected to streamline the planning processes of railway operators. The two capacity products defined in the Regulation, ‘pre-arranged train paths’ and ‘reserve capacity’, were expected to guarantee adequate infrastructure access by defining and reserving capacity earmarked for international freight trains ahead of requests for other types of traffic. In this way, these capacity products confer a priority to international rail freight traffic in capacity allocation, provided sufficient quantities are offered . Table 1Objectives, tools/measures and scope of the Regulation No Objective Tool/measure Scope 1 Improve cooperation between stakeholders Governance: executive and management boards, advisory groups Not covering all stakeholders (e.g. shippers are missing) Rail freight corridor lines and diversionary roots Partial coverage of the overall train path Reconciliation procedures for the establishment of RFCs Member States Consultation of applicants for rail capacity Implementation plans and corridor lines Committee Consulted on corridor lines Monitoring implementation 2 Coordinate and plan investments Investment plan Corridor lines 3 Guarantee international freight trains access to adequate infrastructure capacity Transport market studies Passenger and freight rail traffic Corridor lines Socio-economic costs and benefits of RFC (optional) Pre-arranged train paths and reserve capacity Corridor lines Freight trains Coordination of works Corridor lines Publication of performance of rail freight services and user satisfaction Corridor lines Procedures for coordination of capacity allocation between infrastructure managers Corridor lines Freight trains only 4 Improve operational conditions Procedures for coordination of traffic management Corridor lines Focus on management in the event of disturbance Common targets for punctuality / guidelines for punctuality Trains running on capacity allocated by the one-stop shop 5 Facilitate the use of rail infrastructure and support fair competition between rail freight service providers Corridor one-stop shop Corridor lines Freight trains Corridor information document Corridor lines Coordination between regulators Competition on corridor lines No specific tool (e.g. common decision, arbitrage body, etc.) Coordination of deployment of interoperable IT applications or alternative solutions for capacity requests and the operation of international traffic Corridor lines ERTMS, PCS - examples 6 Improve intermodality along the corridors Procedures for coordination between the operation of the railway infrastructure and the terminals Corridor lines Freight traffic only 7 All objectives Reports from the executive boards and the Commission on the implementation of the Regulation Corridor lines Source: own elaboration based on Regulation (EU) No 913/2010 2.3Baseline and points of comparison The evaluation of the impacts of the Regulation ideally requires a comparison of the current situation (i.e. with the intervention) against a ‘no policy intervention’ situation, which is defined as the ‘counterfactual situation’, or ‘evaluation baseline’. The baseline describes the developments throughout the evaluation period that could have been expected in the absence of the Regulation. In this sense it is a purely hypothetical scenario against which the actual developments are compared to identify the results attributable to the Regulation. The preparatory impact assessment carried out in 2008 built upon three scenarios, including a ‘status quo’ scenario involving no new policy measures. This ‘status quo’ scenario would in theory provide a benchmark against which the impacts of the Regulation can be measured. This section describes the baseline assumptions of the original impact assessment and discusses policy or market developments that have occurred since then which may have diverted from these assumptions. Given the limitations, the evaluation uses a variety of case-specific assumptions to define a suitable point of comparison or benchmarks, as described below, rather than a complete baseline scenario. The impact assessment assumed the following key changes: ·Reductions in dwelling times at border crossings (resulting from technical harmonisation of the infrastructure);

·Reductions in dwelling times at terminals/shunting yards; ·Additional train paths for freight traffic; ·Knock-on effect of less capacity and lower commercial speed for passenger traffic. Table 2Cost-benefit analysis of the 2008 impact assessment Cost(s) / benefits Net present value

(million Euro) Technical harmonisation of the infrastructure Investments to extend sidings -3,219.6 Reduction in costs of rail freight 2,409.9 Reduction in waiting times at the borders 6,532.7 Rules for allocating train paths and

managing traffic Additional capacity for freight trains 1,209.3 Reduction in times (scheduled and unscheduled) for freight 854.2 Reduction in times (scheduled and unscheduled) for passengers -473.8 Increase in tolls for rail freight -263.0 Terminals Investments to extend transfer tracks -322.0 Reduction in the cost of assembling trains 221.9 Reduction in transfer times 1,160.3 Reduction in waiting time 3,770.9 Administrative costs Additional administrative costs -0.8 Total updated net value at operational level (without additional capacity) 10,670.7 Total updated net value at the operational level (with additional capacity) 11,880,0 Economic impact Reduction in the cost of transport 5,604.3 Environmental impact External costs avoided 86,567.3 Congestion costs avoided 455,298.9 Total updated net value at the societal level (without additional capacity) 92,171.6 Total updated net value at the societal level (with additional capacity) 547,470.5 Source: 2008 impact assessment The focus of the Regulation was on reserving and allocating capacity to rail freight, which correspond to objectives 4 and 5 mentioned above. This is the area of intervention where the Regulation provided the most detailed rules and clearly formulated instruments: the corridors’ one-stop shops, the pre-arranged train paths and reserved capacity. The Regulation does not directly address the objective set by the Commission of shifting freight from road to rail. Instead it focusses on improving the performance of rail freight transport, reducing its operational costs and ultimately boosting its competitiveness to allow it to compete with road transport. The intervention logic of the Regulation identified the significant improvement of rail freight’s performance as the main goal and it relied heavily on improvements in interoperability, for which the Regulation provides limited tools. The Regulation was more specific as regards providing adequate amounts and high quality capacity for rail freight. For the Regulation to be effective, the one-stop shops and the capacity offered by them were supposed to meet the dominant part of the railway undertakings’ requests for capacity for international rail freight. This would suggest that virtually all railway undertakings involved in international rail freight would use the one-stop shops. The intervention logic counted on the rail freight corridors developing a digital user-friendly tool for requesting rail infrastructure capacity. This tool and the procedures of the Regulation should have allowed railway undertakings to receive the capacity they need without making requests for capacity to several individual infrastructure managers. The expected result was that railway undertakings would be able to manage train paths over the whole process (from first request to actual train run), without contacting individual infrastructure managers. The other major improvement that the Regulation was supposed to produce was improved coordination with terminals. In practice this meant that across the EU virtually all terminals serving international rail freight traffic would coordinate their operations with the corridors’ one-stop shops in terms of allocating capacity in a coordinated fashion and exchanging information to allow for effective traffic management. This meant that the Regulation should have resulted in the adoption and implementation of procedures that would allow for common offers of train paths and terminal slots and for operational traffic management. This should have resulted in minimised delays and better access to terminals for international freight trains and ultimately an improved performance by rail freight. In terms of specific targets, the Regulation did not set any targets directly stemming from the Commission’s strategic goal of implementing a modal shift in freight. As explained above, the Regulation focused on boosting performance and competitiveness of rail freight, in particular by increasing commercial speed, improving punctuality and reducing costs. No clear targets were set on those objectives either and the impact assessment only provides estimates in terms of reduced costs. Therefore, the focus for the points of comparison falls on performance indicators and cannot measure the effectiveness of the Regulation by analysing impacts going beyond the operational performance of rail freight, such as changes in the modal share of rail freight. Furthermore, a number of factors deviate from the assumptions made in the impact assessment and therefore limit its usefulness to ring-fence the effects stemming from the implementation of the Regulation. Firstly, the 2008 proposal for the Regulation differs significantly from the version adopted by the co-legislation that entered into force in 2010, and the eleven rail freight corridors established have significantly broadened the scope of application compared to the six corridors used in the preparatory impact assessment. Moreover, the comparison of the assumptions of the preparatory study of 2008 and the Commission’s EU Reference Scenario of 2016 with the data observed after the establishment of the freight corridors shows that the forecast and observed average annual growth rates of rail freight transport activity are significantly different. The forecast and actual annual growth rates of the volume of international rail freight are 3.0% against 0.9%, while the forecast and observed annual growth rates of the gross domestic product at EU27 level are relatively closer with 3.3% against 2.5%. In its proposal, the Commission focused on the prioritisation of rail freight along those corridors and put forward the concept of ‘priority freight’, the creation of governance body as an independent legal entity and the mandatory use of a one-stop shop for requests of international train paths. It also proposed that infrastructure managers should define a ‘priority freight’ traffic category and reserve capacity for this category in the annual timetable. The legislators removed the ‘priority freight’ category, the independent governance body and the mandatory use of the one-stop shop, and borrowed the concept of pre-arranged train paths, which Directive 2001/14/EC had introduced for ad hoc requests. In the Regulation, pre-arranged train paths are used for meeting capacity requested in the annual timetable via the corridor one-stop shops. The latter were a new concept, which provided for a single place for requesting rail capacity on the freight corridor lines. The other elements of the Regulation are presented in Section 3. Secondly, a number of initiatives and measures aimed at improving the competitiveness of rail freight transport were implemented after the adoption of the Regulation in 2010, both at EU level, as presented in Section 2.2. At EU level, the most important initiatives adopted after the entry in force of the Regulation are: ·the Single European Railway Area Directive 2012/34/EU, ·Regulation (EU) No 1315/2013 on Union guidelines for the development of the trans-European Transport Network, and the Connecting Europe Facility Regulation (EU) No 1316/2013, ·the Railway Interoperability Directive (EU) 2016/797 (‘technical pillar’ of the Fourth Railway Package) and

·the Governance Directive (‘market pillar’ of the 4th railway package), amending the Single European Railway area Directive 2012/34/EU. More information on the interaction of the Regulation with the above-mentioned legislative initiatives is provided in Section 5, in the analysis of the criteria of relevance and coherence. Furthermore, a number of recent political initiatives and measures at national level have affected the competitiveness of rail freight transport, including notably significant reductions in track access charges for freight trains. In the light of the above considerations, the ‘status quo’ from the 2008 impact assessment could not be used as a valid point of reference to identify the impacts of the Regulation. Therefore, the evaluation used a variety of case-specific assumptions to define a suitable point of comparison or benchmark, including: ·Comparing performance before and after the implementation of the corridors, or assessing the evolution of performance based on time series (see for example Figure 14 ); ·Comparing performance between different corridors (see for example Table 4 ); ·Comparing performance of trains making use of the tools of the Regulation, notably the one-stop shop and pre-arranged trains paths, to those running on the same lines but not making use of these tools (see for example section 5.3 ). The choice of benchmarks was also limited by data availability issues: ·Data availability was limited, in particular for the period before or early during the implementation of the Regulation, limiting the scope for before/after comparisons or time series analysis; ·Data are frequently reported in non-harmonised manner, e.g. traffic volume is reported in train numbers at specific points on the network in some cases and in terms of train-kilometres) in others, complicating comparisons between corridors; ·Trains using capacity allocated via the corridor one-stop shops cannot easily be distinguished in operations from trains running on the same lines but not making use of the services of the one-stop shops, reducing the extent to which the third approach could be used. In order to compensate these limitations, the results were triangulated with opinions provided by stakeholders about the presumable impact of the Regulation. The data used for constructing points of comparison and the results of the analysis, which are analytical in nature, are presented in Chapter 5 , in particular in Section 5.2 assessing the effectiveness of the Regulation. 3Implementation / state of Play 3.1Description of the current situation The Regulation sets an obligation for Member States to establish rail freight corridors. Nine ‘initial’ corridors were defined in the Regulation on the basis of a list of geographical nodes. The establishment of these corridors was carried out in two steps: by November 2013 for six of the corridors and by November 2015 for the remaining three. Following an amendment of the Regulation in 2013, the corridors were given official names, they were extended and the deadline for the Rhine-Danube rail freight corridor was set at 10 November 2020. The freight corridors identified in the Regulation are: Rhine-Alpine, North Sea–Mediterranean, Scandinavian-Mediterranean, Atlantic, Baltic-Adriatic, Mediterranean, Orient/East-Med, North Sea-Baltic and Rhine-Danube (which replaces the the former rail freight corridor No 9). Two ‘further’ rail freight corridors were established following proposals by the Member States concerned. The two corridors, Amber corridor and Alpine-Western Balkan corridor, were established in 2019 and 2020. Therefore, 11 rail freight corridors are currently operational, involving 23 Member States and 3 third countries (Norway, Serbia and Switzerland). All rail freight corridors were established on time, meaning that the responsible Member States and infrastructure managers set up the governance structure and formally implemented the requirements of the Regulation. A map of the rail freight corridors network is presented below.

Figure 3Map of the rail freight corridors in 2020 Source: RailNetEurope The Regulation requires the executive boards of the rail freight corridors, where representatives of public authorities sit, to present to the Commission the results of the implementation plan for that corridor. These reports were one of the inputs to the evaluation. The Regulation requests to the Commission to examine periodically its application. The Regulation scheduled the first report by 10 November 2015 and the following reports for every third year thereafter. In 2018, the Commission produced the first and only report on the application of the Rail Freight Corridors Regulation, accompanied by a Commission staff working document. The main conclusion from the report is that ‘… the implementation of the RFCs has contributed to enhanced cooperation across borders, which the rail freight sector was missing before the entry into force of the Regulation, in particular as regards operational infrastructure management.’ The report also noted indirect effects from the cooperation stemming from the Regulation – e.g. facilitation of operational contacts at international level, even for issues not concerning rail freight, or incentivising the development of coordination processes and IT-tools at EU level. The report concluded that there are mixed or modest results as regards capacity dedicated to rail freight corridors, coordination of works and coordination of traffic management. 3.2Relevant changes in the EU legal framework Following the adoption of the Regulation, the Single European Railway Area Directive (‘Recast’), the Fourth Railway Package and Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2017/2075 came into force. These legal acts introduced, inter alia, more detailed rules on planning of rail infrastructure maintenance. The latter is also a task required by the Regulation. The interplay between the Regulation and these legal acts if addressed in Section 5.4 (Coherence). 4Method 4.1Short description of methodology An evaluation of the Regulation started in May 2016. During the course of the work, the Commission services concluded that it was too early to evaluate the act, as the establishment of some rail freight corridors had only happened in 2013 and some initiatives were still in early phase. Therefore, results from this preliminary evaluation were used to prepare the report from the Commission to the European Parliament and Council on the application of the Regulation, which was adopted in 2018 as mentioned above. The present evaluation has been relaunched in February 2019 and overseen by an inter-service steering group (details in Annex I), which followed the exercise. This evaluation builds in particular on the above-mentioned report and the findings of an evaluation support study. The study relied on a combination of sources and methods, including desk research and extensive stakeholder consultation. The desk research included documents produced by the rail freight corridors’ governance and one-stop shops, as well as documents produced by RailNetEurope, industry papers and documents produced by the Commission services. These include documents that are required by the Regulation, such as transport market studies, biennial reports by the executive boards, annual reports by the management boards, implementation plans and investment plans. The support study also included four case studies that allowed for an in-depth analysis of key topics. They covered: 1.Setting up an international rail freight service – an in-depth process analysis; 2.Infrastructure capacity provided by the rail freight corridors – quality of the products, processes, systems and information provided by the corridor one-stop shops and the infrastructure managers; 3.Coordination of infrastructure works that restrict available capacity; 4.Coordination of capacity and operations between railway infrastructure and terminals. The targeted consultation conducted by external consultants under the study included a survey of key stakeholders, using surveys adapted to eight different stakeholder groups (see Annex II). The consultation also included interviews with a selection of 43 stakeholders. The study answers to 20 detailed evaluation questions, including on implementation, where the study looked into all established rail freight corridors. The interviewees and the case studies were chosen by the contractor in collaboration with the Commission services. The Commission services organised an online public consultation to support the evaluation. The consultation ran from 4 November 2019 to 3 February 2020. The questionnaire of the public consultation was made available on the Commission's Public Consultation Portal ‘Have your say’ in all EU languages. A total of 112 responses to the consultation were received, with a majority (58%) coming from representatives of companies/business organisations and public authorities. Of the remaining respondents, EU citizens (16%) and business associations (11%) were the most represented. There were no responses from consumer organisations. Responses were not received from 11 EU Member States: Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Croatia, Cyprus, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland and the United Kingdom. There were also five responses from representatives based in EEA countries (Norway and Switzerland).

4.2Limitations and robustness of findings The evaluation relied mostly on existing data on rail freight transport, complemented by datasets extracted from IT systems operated by RailNetEurope. The evaluation support study collected additional information, mostly of qualitative nature, through the consultation activities described above and in Annex II. The results of the stakeholder consultation clearly showed differences in perception and assessment between different stakeholder groups, due to vested interests. As a general pattern, stakeholder groups required to provide services under the Regulation (notably infrastructure managers) assess the impact of the Regulation more favourably as their customers and partners, namely railway undertakings, terminal owners / operators and the buyers of rail freight services. However, due to the balanced participation of all relevant groups in the consultation, it was possible to identify such differences; they are made explicit whenever relevant. The evaluation was limited by the fact that the ‘status quo’ scenario developed in the 2008 impact assessment did not provide a valid point of reference as explained in section 2.3 . Another key limitation for the methodology is the limited availability of quantitative information. This is due to the almost complete lack of IT systems at EU level prior to the implementation of the Regulation. The situation has improved recently, not least due to the gradual introduction of systems and performance monitoring as required under the Regulation. However, the lack of historical data severely limited the scope for time-series analysis and before / after comparisons. For a few cases, Rhine-Alpine, North Sea-Mediterranean and Czech-Slovak, historical data could still be reconstructed and provides indications of the effectiveness of the Regulation. The evaluation does not analyse the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. As most of economic sectors, international rail freight transport was significantly affected by the crisis. However, it turned out to be difficult to draw reliable conclusions as regards the performance of the Regulation. Section 11 of Annex VII provides a brief overview of the situation of international rail freight transport during the first ‘lock-down’ in March to April 2020. 5Analysis and answers to the evaluation questions The evaluation questions are included in Annex V . The chapter is structured by the five standard evaluation criteria. Each section aims to answer all corresponding evaluation questions. However, for the sake of readability, the evaluation questions are not repeated in the main text of the document. 5.1Relevance This section aims at replying to the question whether the objectives and the tools of the Regulation are still relevant to address the needs of EU’s rail freight transport. This section also looks at developments in relevant EU policies in areas such as transport, climate change, energy, environment and the economy to see if the Regulation is still aligned with these EU policies. It investigates whether the scope, the areas of intervention and the measures provided for in the Regulation are appropriate to address the problems and needs of European rail freight transport and to reach the objectives of the Regulation. As explained in Section 2.2 above, the objectives of the Regulation are linked to improving the performance of rail freight and as a result increasing its modal share. The latter produces numerous positive effects (lower GHG emissions, improved energy efficiency of transport, less road congestion, etc.), and is thus in line with a wide range of EU policies (climate change, energy, environment and transport). In policy terms, the relevance of the Regulation’s objectives has even increased, with the increase of the Union’s ambitions in particular concerning climate change policy. Already in 2011, the White Paper on transport set the following major objectives: reduction of GHG emissions, a drastic decrease in the oil dependency ratio of transport-related activities and limiting the growth of congestion. The paper introduced the target of shifting 30% of road freight over 300 km to ‘other modes such as rail or waterborne transport by 2030, and more than 50% by 2050, facilitated by efficient and green freight corridors’. The European Green Deal sets a target for shifting freight to rail as well: ‘As a matter of priority, a substantial part of the 75% of freight carried today by road should shift onto rail and inland waterways.’ In terms of environmental policy, the European Green Deal sets ambitious goals: ‘Transport should become drastically less polluting, especially in cities.’ and ‘… the Commission will adopt in 2021 a zero pollution action plan for air, water and soil.’ With road transport being a major source of nitrogen oxides, shifting freight from road to rail can contribute to reducing air pollution. In terms of energy policy, a shift of freight from road to rail would improve the overall energy efficiency of EU freight transport. Rail transport consumes significantly less energy than transport over road, thanks to physical advantages such as the wheel-on-rail mechanism and air resistance. The Regulation is also relevant in respect to competition policy, in that it sets the regulatory framework aimed to facilitate the use of rail infrastructure by rail freight market operators and thus contributes to the achievement of a level playing field between rail freight service providers. The ongoing review of the Community guidelines on State aid rules for railway undertakings is aimed at updating the existing State aid rules applicable to the railway sector in line with the new European policy priorities and strategies to boost the green and digital transition, in order to help increase the share of rail freight transport whilst at the same time ensuring fair competition. As regards the objectives of the Regulation, they remain relevant for improving the performance of rail freight. The key barriers to increasing competitiveness of rail freight, according to the replies provided in the consultations, are those identified in the intervention logic. They are the lack of price competitiveness, the lack of quality of rail freight transport services (in particular punctuality, predictability and flexibility), the lack of responsiveness to meet shippers’ needs, interoperability barriers for rail and the lack of level playing field between different transport modes (e.g. lack of consistent application of ‘polluter pays’ and ‘user pays’ principles). Freight market developments (growing trade flows, including with third countries), rail infrastructure capacity challenges (growing passenger traffic in some Member States and neglected rail infrastructure) as well as technological developments (IT tools for rail capacity allocation) also confirm the relevance of the Regulation’s objective. On the last point, ensuring interconnectedness and interoperability of capacity allocation IT tools appears to be insufficiently addressed in existing legislation. It is also an issue where an EU network-level solution is currently missing. The available data also confirms lack of improvement in commercial speed and punctuality of rail freight (see Annex VII, section 3.1 and section 3.2 ), during the time of operation of the rail freight corridors. This suggests that some of the objectives have not been achieved to the extent necessary to make an impact. The relevance of the objective to ‘guarantee international freight trains access to adequate infrastructure capacity’ has actually increased since the adoption of the Regulation. The competition for capacity between passenger and freight traffic is increasing. The discrepancy between supply and demand of capacity is illustrated by the increase in the length of lines declared congested from700 km in 2012 to close to 2 300 km in 2018, including more than 1 300 km of lines designated to the rail freight corridors (see section 3.3 of Annex VII ). Another important question is whether the scope, the areas of intervention, the tools and the measures provided for in the Regulation are appropriate to address the problems and needs of European rail freight transport and to reach the objectives of the Regulation.

The intervention logic describes most of these tools and measures in the sections ‘Activities’ and ‘Outputs’. The table in Section 2.2 above provides a more detailed, yet streamlined, overview that links the tools and measures to the objectives and identifies their scope. The relevance of the Regulation in relation to the strategic targets for EU transport identified by the Commission has not changed. The tools of the Regulation, if adjusted to meet railway undertakings’ needs, would help drive costs down for rail freight and improve its performance. As indicated below, stakeholders confirm that these issues are key in the competition between rail and road freight. Figure 4Barriers to increasing the competitiveness and the market share of rail freight according to the targeted survey-questionnaire (number of replies) Source: Evaluation support study, based on the targeted survey questionnaire Stakeholders identify as main problems for rail freight the lack of a level playing field with other modes, price competitiveness, the poor performance of rail and interoperability barriers. Different stakeholder groups see the main problems to rail freight differently. Railway undertakings are the only ones who point to capacity restrictions as the most important problem facing rail freight. Customers of rail services agree with the major problems mentioned above, giving less importance to the level playing field but stressing the importance of structural economic changes and to a slightly smaller extent the lack of flexibility of rail services. Infrastructure managers follow the majority opinion, but also stress the importance of interoperability issues and to a lesser extent the poor coordination of railway undertakings. The views of stakeholders confirm that rail freight is facing a number of serious challenges and many of them are not addressed by the Regulation, but by other EU legislation, e.g. the issue of the level playing field or price competitiveness vis-a-vis road freight. Nevertheless, issues with rail infrastructure capacity allocation, which are the focus of the Regulation, were mentioned by many and especially by infrastructure managers. In general, the tools and measures envisaged by the Regulation are still relevant as there have been no new alternative solutions (including technological) that would allow for achieving the objectives of the Regulation. The list of tools and measures is provided in Table 1 , Section 2.2, above. The relevance of the two key tools - the ‘one-stop shop’ and ‘pre-arranged train paths and reserve capacity’ was undermined by the fact that they were in competition with an alternative capacity allocation process, where the applicants addressed their capacity requests to individual infrastructure managers. Thus, only 10% of international rail freight traffic in the countries involved in the rail freight corridors used capacity allocated by the one-stop shops. Furthermore, stakeholders, and in particular railway undertakings, indicated that the instruments provided by the Regulation did not suit their needs. The pre-arranged train paths did not provide sufficient quality as assessed below on the basis of 6 criteria. Figure 5Summary of the responses to the question ‘Has the process of pre-arranged path allocation proved to be effective in meeting the market needs?’ Source: Evaluation support study The evaluation support study found that, especially smaller railway undertakings, were reluctant to use the services of the one-stop shop. The reasons included language problems and lack of knowledge of the corridor one-stop shop application process. Other issues included the IT tool (PCS), used by the one-stop shops for requesting capacity, which was avoided by stakeholders. Pre-arranged paths were possibly more interesting for the railway undertakings when capacity was scarce, which is more the case in the western rather than in eastern Europe. The Regulation allows the one-stop shops to provide capacity different from pre-arranged train paths, but in reality this instrument is the dominant option offered by the one-stop shops. Its relevance seems limited and the perception of stakeholders is that it does not correspond to most capacity needs of rail freight. Stakeholders complained in a survey that the deadlines for capacity requests come too early, compared to the reality of the market, which often requires changes of train paths at later stages. These changes lead to additional work and staff cost. In the evaluation support study, a railway undertaking was quoted saying that the requests were due 18 months in advance, although rail freight transport contracts were usually agreed just 3 months in advance. Some 40% of one railway undertaking services are ordered 2 months prior to the train run, namely during the ad hoc phase. Another railway undertaking stated that 99% of the train paths were ordered on an ad hoc basis and less than 10 days before departure. Even, if these extreme numbers are not representative of the sector, other statements confirm that the tools or the Regulation are not perceived as suitable, as they are limited in terms of flexibility. EU legislation adopted after the Regulation had come into force, introduced some measures and tools that raise some questions about the relevance of the following tools/measures: ·investment planning,

·coordination of works and ·designation of corridors. They are presented in detail in Annex VII , section 12 . The overall conclusion on investment planning is that the TEN-T Guidelines provide a more focused framework for this purpose. The scope and the approach is not the same, leaving possibilities for synergies, which had been explored to a limited extent. In regard to coordination of works, Annex VII of Directive 2012/34/EU, introduced very detailed requirements as regards the planning of temporary capacity restrictions and consultation of applicants. The governance of the rail freight corridors remains an important interface for stakeholders to improve the implementation of the coordination, which remains the focus of criticism by railway undertakings. The geographical designation of corridors is crucial for the relevance of the tools of the Regulation, as it defines the Regulation’s geographical scope of application. In this case the adoption of Commission implementing decisions, which extended the network of rail freight corridors, helped increase the relevance of its tools. However, this resulted in a growing misalignment between the rail freight and the core network corridors, which resulted in a challenge for some management boards to ensure access to high quality infrastructure for international rail freight traffic. As regards the relevance of the Regulation in terms of the scope of the provisions, the intervention logic clearly indicates that the Regulation aims at addressing a limited set of problems. The focus of the Regulation is on rail capacity allocation and operational management (rail freight traffic, coordination with terminals, etc.) of rail freight. As mentioned above, the problems and the objectives identified in the intervention logic remain relevant. Capacity allocation and traffic management are particularly relevant for addressing rail freight’s performance issues on heavily used lines with mixed traffic. The recently adopted Commission communication on an EU Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy envisages measures to boost long-distance and cross-border passenger rail services, including night trains. Increasing rail passenger traffic will make rail capacity management more challenging and hence more relevant, especially for cross-border trains. The possibilities for building new and improving existing rail infrastructure are limited and bottlenecks would have to be addressed via optimisation of capacity planning and allocation, especially as traffic is going to continue primarily on mixed use lines. 5.2Effectiveness This section addresses the criterion of effectiveness by analysing the impacts of the main intervention areas addressed by the Regulation, as outlined in Section 2.2 . Geographical definition and establishment and modification of rail freight corridors (Articles 2(2a) and 3 to 7) The rules of the Regulation apply only to lines designated to the corridors. Therefore, the geographic definition of the corridors plays a key role for the effectiveness of the Regulation. The evaluation has shown that the network overall covers the most relevant transport axes and the specific lines used for freight traffic. Section 4 of Annex VII provides maps of the total number of international rail freight trains on the entire EU railway network in 2019 overlaid over a map of the rail freight corridors. Nevertheless, data on international rail freight traffic on the network shows that a number of lines with significant international traffic are missing from the network. Some notable examples include the lines Berlin – Hamburg (Germany), Paris – Dijon (France), Koblenz (Germany) – Wasserbillig (Luxembourg) / Saarbrücken, Munich – Berlin – Rostock (Germany). All of these lines have higher number of international freight trains than some of the lines included in the corridors. Even more significantly, the corridors include only a very limited selection of diversionary lines. Diversionary lines are crucial to ensure continuity of traffic in the event of disruption of the principal lines of the corridors. As an example, the key diversionary routes for the Rhine-Alpine corridor during the major disruption in 2017 in Rastatt (Germany) are not included in the corridor. The same is true for diversionary lines used during the significant disruptions at Modane and Narbonne in 2019 (see Annex VII , section 4 for details). The limited coverage of diversionary lines significantly impairs the effectiveness of the Regulation in the event of disturbances – an issue explicitly addressed by Article 17 – because the rules of the Regulation do not apply to lines not formally designated to a corridor. Furthermore, in the majority of the cases only part of the freight train’s path is on the rail freight corridors lines. Thus, the applicants need to make separate requests for the part of the trip from the starting point to the corridor line or from the corridor line to the final destination (so-called feeder and outflow paths). This limits the simplification effect of the one-stop shop, as the applicant still needs to contact the individual infrastructure managers for the first and last leg of the trip. The Regulation gives Member States and infrastructure managers significant flexibility to define and modify the alignment of the corridors. While this flexibility facilitates a response to potentially evolving market needs, it has also weakened the geographic consistency of the corridors with the TEN-T network and the core network corridors, which are more stable over time. This in turn may compromise the complementarity between the two policies in terms of development and management of infrastructure. Overall, the evaluation indicates a potential to strengthen the effectiveness of the Regulation via on optimisation of the geographical definition of the network and the rules for modifying it. The lack of a network approach that would allow to cover the whole train path in a single effort, undermines the impact of the Regulation and puts into question any simplification effects. Any additional analysis should also consider the potential impact of industry initiatives such as the Timetable Redesign Project, which are still in an early phase. Governance, implementation plan and monitoring (Articles 8, 9 and 22) The Regulation lays down the following governance structure: (i) the executive board composed of representatives of Member State authorities, (ii) the management board composed of representatives of the infrastructure managers and (iii) two advisory groups made up of railway undertakings and managers and owners of the terminals, respectively. The establishment of a dedicated legal entity for the management board is optional. The Commission has no formal role in the governance structure. The governance structures have been established for all corridors as provided for in the Regulation. In addition to setting up the formal governance, i.e. the decision-making bodies of the corridors, stakeholders have delegated operational tasks related to the implementation to (i) permanent structures set up at corridor level and (ii) to working groups assembling experts within the individual infrastructure managers. The organisational and legal setup of the corridor-level structures varies. Many but not all of them are implemented in the form of dedicated legal entity, typically a European Economic Interest Group. A more detailed description of the implementation of the governance is provided in Section 2.1 of Annex VII . As regards the coordination between the freight corridors’ governance and related entities – such as the European Union Agency for Railways, the TEN-T Core Network Corridors, the Single European Rail Area Committee (SERAC), the Platform of Rail Infrastructure Managers in Europe (PRIME), the Railway Undertakings Dialogue (RU Dialogue), the S2R Joint Undertaking and the Digital Transport and Logistics Forum – the information collected suggests that some coordination has taken place, with variations between corridors; see section 2.4 of Annex VII for an overview of examples. In particular, a number of corridors regularly engaged with the corresponding TEN-T corridor. In some cases, the European Union Agency for Railways was involved in resolving issues identified by the governance structure. Interactions with other organisations and entities have been rather limited.

The successful establishment of the governance structure in itself contributes directly to achieving the objective to improve cooperation on international rail freight transport. However, its ultimate role is to drive the development of the corridors, i.e. to enable the achievement of the other objectives of the Regulation as listed in Section 2.2 above. In the following, the analysis focusses on issues that supported or hampered the effectiveness of the governance structure in this steering role. Objective-led corridor management The first observation is that the Regulation imposes a layered model of management borrowed from the organisation of business corporations. The strategic level is provided by the executive boards. Member State representatives define general objectives, supervise the activities taken by the operational level to implement them and provide political support where needed. At the operational level, the management board break down the general objectives into more operational ones, set out an implementation plan comprising the measures designed to achieve the objectives (Article 9), implement (Articles 10 to 18) and monitor the effects of these measures (Article 19). Overall, the intervention logic of the Regulation defines an objective-led approach to corridor management. The Regulation also requires the governance of the freight corridors to monitor market developments via the transport market studies. Thus, the executive boards should be able to set objectives based on market needs. At the same time, the executive boards can also take into account any market failures, such as limited competition, which prevent the development of rail freight services and address these via the general objectives. The management cycle is closed by the requirement in Article 9(2) to periodically review the implementation plan, i.e. the objectives and the programme of implementing measures. Direct customers of the infrastructure managers, i.e. railway undertakings and other applicants, and the immediate partners in the logistic chain, owners and operators of terminals, are consulted but not actively involved in this cycle. The corridor governance structures did implement a variety of measures to implement the Regulation, responding in many cases to the specific challenges in individual corridors. However, available evidence suggests that the objective-led management process as outlined above has not been effectively implemented. At a very fundamental level, only a minority of the executive boards have adopted general objectives for the corridors in accordance with Article 8(1) of the Regulation; see Section 1 of Annex VII for an overview. In the cases where general objective have been adopted, there is no clear evidence that executive boards have used the general objectives as tool supporting their supervisory role in the governance, as already pointed out in the Commission report of 2018: ‘… the link between the results of the performance monitoring and the objectives defined in the implementation plan as well as the general objectives of the RFCs has not been very clear so far.’ Overall, executive boards have not exploited the general objectives as a tool to achieve the objectives of the Regulation. Independence of the governance from national level The governance structure is designed as a collective decision-making body assembling representatives of Member State authorities and individual infrastructure managers, i.e. entities set up at national level. Analysis on the implementation and effectiveness of the measures taken in the various intervention areas (see below) suggests that a reliance on national approach has persisted despite the requirements of the Regulation, e.g. as witnessed by the limited role assigned to the corridor one-stop shops or the limited offer of corridor capacity (pre-arranged train paths and reserve capacity). It seems plausible that the absence of an independent entity representing corridor, i.e. supra-national interests in the formal governance structure has contributed to the persistence of national-level approaches. In this respect it is worth noting that the Commission proposal for the Regulation envisaged a single governance body, implemented in the form of an independent legal entity and headed by a director with a term of office of at least three years. The governance body would have had reporting obligations vis-à-vis Member States and, in addition and where necessary, the European TEN-T coordinators. Overall, the proposal provided for a governance more independent from the national level than the Regulation as adopted by the co-legislators. Involvement of customers of rail freight services and other relevant stakeholders The governance structure does not involve buyers of rail freight services, such as combined transport operators, logistic service providers or shippers from industry. These stakeholder groups are the ultimate decision-makers when it comes to modal choice. As a logical consequence of the non-involvement of this stakeholder group, the Regulation also does not define a process ensuring that their needs are reflected in the objectives of the corridors. In addition, as the analysis on the other intervention areas below shows, problems hampering the performance of international rail freight services transcend the scope of the Regulation. The formal governance structure does not specify the interrelations between the corridor governance and the bodies and structures responsible for such issues, such as the European Union Agency for Railways or the national safety authorities. Some corridors have involved these bodies on a voluntary basis on specific issues but the practise is not systematic. Resources dedicated to the governance The effectiveness of the governance hinges on the availability of adequate resources, enabling the bodies to fulfil its tasks in an effective manner. The evaluation suggests that the resources dedicated to the governance have not been sufficient. At the level of the executive board (Member States), one of the more work-intensive tasks is the preparation of the implementation reports to be submitted to the Commission in accordance with Article 22. The reports do not provide all the information required by the Regulation and exhibit considerable differences in the structure and level of detail. This suggests that the executive boards might lack resources to properly address this obligation. They might also choose not to invest efforts in reporting because it is not perceived as a useful policy tool.

Management boards have delegated most of the operational tasks in implementing the Regulation to permanent structures. The human resources allocated to these bodies are limited to a few full-time equivalents; see Section 2.2 of Annex VII for an overview. The staff of the permanent office consists of three to seven full-time equivalents depending on the corridor. As an example, the tasks related to operation of the corridor one-stop shop are typically carried by a single person part of the permanent management office, i.e. with one full-time equivalent. This appears insufficient to allow for effective implementation of the Regulation and for achieving its objectives. To illustrate DB Netz AG, the German infrastructure manager, receives tens of thousands of path requests per year, most of them on an ad-hoc basis (see Figure 12 below). It is doubtful to what extent a single person can provide effective support in the coordination such request volumes. Coordination between corridors via informal coordination structures The Regulation defines the governance structure exclusively at the level of individual corridors. Coordination between corridors is required only as regards specific tasks, namely the coordination of pre-arranged train paths (Article 14(3)) and introducing procedures for coordinating traffic along connected freight corridors (Article 16(1)). However, the network nature of international rail freight transport implies that uniform rules and approaches at the level of the EU rail network are often more effective and efficient. In practice, stakeholders at all levels of the governance structures – Member States, infrastructure managers, railway undertakings, terminal owners/operators and regulatory bodies – have set up informal structure for coordination across corridors. These structures have been created outside the rules of the Regulation. The existence of these structures is indicative of a gap in the Regulation which ultimately aims at establishing a ‘European network for competitive freight’. These structures have implemented a number of requirements in a manner harmonised across corridors even though the Regulation does not require such coordination. Notable examples include: ·The adoption of harmonised IT tools and interfaces (e.g., the Path Coordination System and the Customer Information Platform). ·The adoption of an agreed list and rules on calculation of key performance indicators (with work continuing on the issue). ·The adoption of guidelines and standards crucial for the implementation of the Regulation, e.g. the guidelines for corridor one-stop shops concerning the management of pre-arranged train path and reserve capacity. ·A uniform user satisfaction survey. In the stakeholder consultation, representatives of management boards and infrastructure managers appear content with the effectiveness of these voluntary structures ( Figure 8 ). However, railway undertakings and terminal owners and operators do not share this assessment: less than 30% of these groups consider voluntary coordination between corridors to be sufficiently effective. Figure 8Targeted stakeholder consultation: Responses to the question ‘Do you think that the lack of formal requirements on the network-level coordination in the Regulation has negatively affected coordination between the rail freight corridors? Source: evaluation support study, targeted stakeholder consultation (survey-questionnaire) Practical challenges created by the informal approach to cross-corridor coordination include: ·The proliferation of decision-making and coordination bodies reduces transparency of decision-making processes. ·The efficiency of the decision-making processes suffers due to the need to revert to formal governance structures with formal decision-making competences set up at corridor level. This creates significant avoidable complexity in decision-making processes (see Figure 18 ). ·The informal nature of the coordination bodies can also create uncertainty as regards the status of the harmonised guidelines and standards. In many cases, the lack of legal obligations results in non-implementation of these guidelines and standards at national level, mainly by individual infrastructure managers. See for example Section 2.6 of Annex VII on the implementation of the priority rules for capacity allocation in the ‘Handbook for International Contingency Management’, which implements Article 17 of the Regulation. Failure to implement network-level guidelines at national level ultimately eliminates their effectiveness. Much of the work and even of the decision-making as regards harmonised guidelines and standards has been taken over by RailNetEurope, an association established by (most) European infrastructure managers but with no formal role in legislation. Guidelines with high relevance for the implementation of the Regulation are adopted by representatives of infrastructure managers in the decision-making bodies of RailNetEurope, i.e. outside the governance structure defined by the Regulation.

The fourth railway package introduces a ‘European Network of Infrastructure Managers’ but does not explicitly assign this network with any tasks or decision-making competences under the Regulation. Overall, the evaluation indicates that the lack of a formal network layer in the formal governance structure for international rail freight results in an untapped potential to increase its effectiveness and efficiency of the Regulation. However, given an already complex landscape of existing bodies and structures – both formal and informal – further analysis would be needed to assess this potential, the possible ways to realise it and how these compare in terms of costs and benefits. Investment planning (Article 11) The management boards of all corridors have drawn up investments plans including details of indicative medium and long-term investment as required by Article 11 of the Regulation. However, these plans appear to be mostly a compilation of investment planning at national level. Their contribution to the coordination of investments has been limited at best. In addition, the frequency of updates of the plans is generally too low to serve a tangible information function, e.g. as a basis to assist railway undertakings in their strategic planning (e.g. purchase of rolling stock). This assessment is confirmed by the targeted stakeholder consultation (see Figure 9 below). Only about half of the respondents in the stakeholder consultation consider that the Regulation resulted at least in some “true” coordination of investments along the corridor, in the sense of cross-border coordination that resulted in an adjustment of national investment plans. A similar opinion prevails on the removal of capacity bottlenecks. Figure 9Assessment of contribution of the contribution of the Regulation to the coordination of investments and removal of bottlenecks Source: evaluation support study, stakeholder survey-questionnaire. However, there are some examples of good practices: a few corridors have started in-depth studies of bottlenecks and the market potential of lifting them, for example as regards longer and heavier trains. Such studies have the potential to strengthen the effectiveness of the Regulation in terms of coordination of investments, by focussing on the concrete needs of rail freight transport and by fully taking into account benefits at corridor level which may not always be reflected by studies at national level. A factor hindering a consistent identification of infrastructure capacity bottlenecks is the lack of a common definition and methodology to identify capacity bottlenecks as highlighted by a recent study carried out by Rhine-Alpine freight corridor. The effectiveness of investment planning has been hampered by a lack of full coherence between the Regulation and the TEN-T Guidelines adopted three years after the adoption of the Regulation. Between the two acts, there is a certain overlap in tasks and instruments without a clear delineation of their respective purpose. This concerns most notably the investment plan to be drawn up by the management boards of rail freight corridors (and to be adopted by executive boards) in accordance with Article 11 of the Regulation and the corridor work plan to be prepared by the European coordinator in accordance with Article 47 of the Regulation (EU) No 1315/2013. Figure 10Assessment of the cooperation between the governance structure of rail freight corridors and TEN-T core network corridors by stakeholders Intervention area For those areas for which you think there is an overlap in competences and activities, how effective do you consider the cooperation in practice between the governance structure of the rail freight corridors, on the one hand, and the EU coordinators and their secretariat, on the other? To a large extent To a moderate extent To a small extent Not at all Overall 0 9 15 0 Investment planning 2 9 11 2 Deployment of new technologies and telematics applications, incl. ERTMS 0 9 13 2 Examining the demand for transport services (e.g., Transport Market Study) 0 7 14 2 Improving infrastructure use 0 6 12 3 Improving intermodal/multimodal transport 1 5 14 4 Total 3 45 79 13 Source: evaluation support study Coherence of the Regulation with the TEN-T and CEF policies has also been hampered by differences in the geographical alignment of the rail freight corridors, on the one hand, and the core network corridors, on the other. The Regulation gives sector stakeholders leeway to designate specific lines based on market and operational considerations. Therefore, the alignment of rail freight corridors may include lines with relevance for international rail freight which are not covered by the planning and financing framework of TEN-T and CEF Regulations. On top of extensive information exchange in various form, there have been very positive examples of cooperation between the governance of the rail freight corridors and the European TEN-T coordinators. On initiative of DG MOVE, the governance structure of the rail freight corridors has also gathered input on the specific infrastructure needs of international rail freight traffic along the corridors, which was considered by the EU coordinators in drawing up their fourth edition of the corridor work plans. In some cases the political weight of EU coordinators was leveraged to progress on issues within the remit of the rail freight corridors, which did not necessarily refer to infrastructure development. A notable example is the ministerial declaration of the Member States involved in Orient/East-Mediterranean corridor on ‘effective improvements at border crossings’ or coordinators addressing issues such as the impacts of works on rail freight traffic, etc. In conclusion, the government structures of the corridors have not used the investment plan as an effective tool for the coordination of infrastructure investments along the corridors. The investment plan consist mainly in a compilation of investment plans at national level or replicates the works plans drawn up by the European coordinators in accordance with Article 47 of the TEN-T Guidelines. On a practical level, some useful work have nevertheless been carried out by the governance of rail freight corridors, focussing on the specific infrastructure needs of rail freight traffic. Capacity allocation and coordination of works (Articles 12, 13, 14, 15) The issue of capacity allocation is the key intervention area of the Regulation. Measures in this area contribute to the following objectives:

·Objective 3: Guarantee international freight trains access to adequate infrastructure capacity, recognizing the needs of other types of transport, including passenger transport; ·Objective 5: Facilitate the use of rail infrastructure for international rail freight services and support fair competition between rail freight service providers; The key tools to achieve these objectives are: 1.the corridor one-stop shop allowing applicants to request and be allocated infrastructure capacity in a single place, facilitating the use of infrastructure for operators of international rail freight services; 2.Two dedicated capacity products, ‘pre-arranged train paths’ and ‘reserve capacity’ which are intended to guarantee international freight train capacity of adequate quantity and better quality than so far. The data gathered for the evaluation support study and from documents produced by the governance and the one-stop shops of the rail freight corridors, suggests that the these tools failed to provide better access to rail capacity for international freight. The overall conclusion is that the implementation was not in line with the objective of the Regulation to facilitate capacity requests for international freight and guarantee access to the best available quality of rail capacity for international freight. One-stop shops The purpose of the one-stop shops is to facilitate applicants to request capacity for freight trains crossing at least one border along the freight corridors. The data shows that one-stop shops failed to make a big impact on the rail market. In 2017 and 2018, the capacity allocated by the one-stop shops amounted to less than 10% of international rail freight traffic in the countries involved in the rail freight corridors. In 2019, the share has slightly increased to 13%. The volume of capacity offered and allocated via the corridor one-stop shops has not significantly increased since 2019, so it is likely that the relevance of the one-stop shops in capacity allocation for cross-border freight traffic remains limited even now. In this context, it is worth mentioning that infrastructure managers have not implemented their commitment in the 2016 Sector Statementto ‘allocate, coordinate or support the majority of the entire international rail freight market along the corridors and connecting lines via the C-OSS’ in the medium term. The share of capacity allocated via the one-stop shops differs between corridors, with a single corridor, North Sea-Mediterranean RFC, allocating about one third of the total. However, a corridor-specific share of capacity allocated via the one-stop shops cannot be calculated, as no information is provided on total traffic by corridor. Table 3Cross-border rail freight traffic: overall volume and capacity offered / allocated via the corridor one-stop shops Million train-km / train path-km Relation to total cross-border traffic TT2017 TT2018 TT2019 TT2020 TT2021 TT2022 TT2017 TT2018 TT2019 Total cross-border traffic 366,6 374.8 362.3(1) n/a n/a n/a 100% 100% 100% Capacity offered via one-stop shops 151.6 132.7 150.9 160.2 147.9 n/a 41% 35% 42% … of which PaPs 113.8 105.1 120,6 130.8 123.6 129.4 31% 28% 33% … of which RC 37.8 27.6 30.2 29.4 24.3 n/a 10% 7% 8% Capacity allocated by one-stop shops 32.9 33.7 46.3 49.2 48.2 n/a 9% 9% 13% … of which PaPs 30.2 31.9 42.9 47.8 47.4 n/a 8% 9% 12% … of which RC 2.8 1.8 3.3 1.4 0.8 n/a 1% 0% 1% Notes: PaP = pre-arranged train path; RC = reserve capacity; TT = timetable year (starts in December of preceding year) (1) Information on rail freight traffic in BE in 2019 missing; the 2018 was imputed instead. Sources: RailNetEurope (Path Coordination System); TRAMOS database The limited market uptake of capacity offered via the corridors suggests that the capacity offer currently provided by infrastructure managers via the corridors does not even provide railway undertakings with sufficient benefits to move from the pre-existing regime that it was intended to replace. Obviously, this simple insight raises serious doubts about the effectiveness of the Regulation. Corridor capacity products (pre-arranged train paths and reserve capacity) and their impact Reserving capacity for rail freight during the process of preparing the annual timetable is the other key tool of the Regulation. The capacity is reserved by the infrastructure managers by constructing pre-arranged train paths and by defining reserve capacity for international freight trains. These tools are instrumental for achieving the objective to ‘guarantee international freight trains access to adequate infrastructure capacity’. ‘Pre-arranged train paths’ in the sense of the Regulation are train paths that are defined by infrastructure managers prior to the capacity allocation process and which are allocated with priority to international freight trains. The introduction of pre-arranged train paths constitutes a fundamental change to the pre-existing regime of capacity allocation as it reverses the order of demand and offer in the process. The traditional process is initiated by capacity requests submitted by railway undertakings and other applicants, i.e. on the demand side, while the definition of pre-arranged train paths represents the supply side. This reversal offers a number of advantages, including notably:

·The possibility to safeguard capacity for specific types of traffic, i.e. international freight trains in the case of the Regulation; ·An increased transparency of the capacity available to railway undertakings; ·The possibility to optimise the use of infrastructure capacity by ‘bundling’ trains. Such optimised patterns of capacity utilisation are unlikely to emerge as a result of capacity requests placed by individual railway undertakings. However, the offer-driven approach involves an unavoidable trade-off between the benefits above and a number of disadvantages and challenges: ·Lower flexibility to accommodate specific capacity needs, which result e.g. from different speeds of the trains depending on train weight or rolling stock and which cannot be perfectly anticipated; ·A lower overall flexibility of the capacity allocation process, as the pre-definition of the capacity offer needs to be maintained to be effective in practice, i.e. changes in capacity needs due to changes in demand means that capacity requests potentially could be declined if not in line with the pre-defined offer; Section 9 of Annex VII provides additional details. Railway undertakings confirm the theoretical potential of the concept in the stakeholder consultation. For most of the quality criteria considered, a majority of respondents consider that pre-arranged train paths can make a ‘high’ or ‘moderate’ contribution to quality. The most notable benefit is expected in terms of the transparency of the capacity offer, on which close to 60% of respondents expect a ‘high’ and more than 80% at least a ‘moderate’ contribution (see Figure 11 below). Obviously, the biggest benefits from reserving capacity can be expected on congested infrastructure, i.e. lines where demand is above the available capacity. However, this approach is only effective if sufficient quantities of such train paths are offered. Figure 11Pre-arranged train paths and key quality criteria of infrastructure capacity for rail freight traffic Source: evaluation support study; targeted stakeholder consultation Effectiveness of corridor capacity in safeguarding capacity Data for a number of congested sections of corridor lines shows that the capacity offer via the corridor one-stop shops is in most cases below the total volume of international rail freight traffic (see Table 4 below). This means that the pre-arranged train paths are not effective in safeguarding capacity for international freight trains on these sections. A more limited but still effective way of safeguarding capacity for international rail freight traffic would be to offer PaPs particular during daytime, when the capacity needs of passenger traffic are most intense. During night time, capacity for freight trains could be considered to be abundant anyways. However, Table 4 shows no evidence that PaPs are strategically offered during daytime: in most cases, the share of PaPs between 6.00 and 19.00 roughly amounts to half of the entire PaP offer. Table 4Some examples of capacity offer by rail freight corridors on congested lines or lines close to congestion (i.e. with limited residual capacity) Section (specific point for number of trains) RFC(s) Declaration of

congestion1 Capacity demand

(traffic in trains per day) Capacity offer (PaPs per day) Capacity offer (8) exceeds capacity demand (7)? Total Passenger Freight Of which: international freight Number of PaPs (all day) Number of PaPs between 6:00 and 19:00 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Karlsruhe – Basel

(Bad Krozingen) RFC 1 Yes 249 129 120 120 52 23 No Prague – Česká Třebová (Pardubice) RFC 7, RFC 9 No 426 281 145 35 20 10 No Copenhagen – Roskilde (Glostrup) RFC 3 Yes 397 365 32 21 24 14 Yes Koper – Divača (Koper Tovorna)(2) RFC 5, RFC 6, RFC 11 Yes 68 9 59 45 14 8 No Budapest- Ferencváros – Kelenföld (Kelenföld) RFC6, RFC7, RFC9, RFC11 No 261 165 97 68 42 28 No Strasbourg – Séléstat (Séléstat) RFC 2 No 135 109 26 23 44 29 Yes Notes: (1) Declaration of congestion in accordance with Article 47 of Directive 2012/34/EU (2) This line is single track, its capacity is therefore significantly lower than of the other lines presented. Sources: Eurostat, RNE, path catalogues of rail freight corridors, network statements of infrastructure managers Another important aspect in the capacity allocation process is the timing when capacity is made available (and reserved) for international freight trains. Ideally, the timing of the capacity offer is synchronised with the evolution of demand. The demand for railway infrastructure capacity in the form of train paths derives from the demand of shippers, i.e. industry and commerce, for transport and logistics services. The elaboration of the schedule of shippers predetermines to a large extent the moment when the concrete capacity needs become known. The time horizon over which shippers plan their logistics operations varies significantly between different sectors and commodities. As an example, a sector practicing ‘just-in-time’ production concepts, such as the automotive industry, will have a high share of spot transport demand whereas more stable industries, such as the energy industry, will have more stable demand over time.

Interestingly, the stakeholder consultation has shown that even for relatively stable transport, precise capacity needs become known only a few months in advance. This is significantly later than the deadline to request pre-arranged train paths, which is 8 months before the change in the annual timetable, i.e. up to 20 months before the running day of an individual train. The timing of offer and demand for infrastructure capacity is obviously not aligned. The tools to safeguard capacity for international rail freight traffic have not been effective in many cases. A number of factors have been identified in the evaluation. Incomplete harmonisation between corridors In order to address the shortcomings of the ‘pre-arranged capacity’ approach, corridors have adopted different approaches, notably to address the lack of flexibility inherent to pre-defined capacity. However, this has reduced the harmonisation of the capacity products introduced by the Regulation, hampering the facilitation effect of the corridors. This is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of railway undertakings serve geographically dispersed markets, i.e. operate not only along a single corridor. In addition, roughly 40% of the path requests placed via the corridor one-stop shops concern more than one corridor. In such cases, harmonisation issues may even concern individual path requests as different products may be offered on different corridors. Incomplete coverage of the capacity management process The remit of the corridor one-stop shops defined in the Regulation covers the offer and the allocation of train paths along the corridors. However, the allocation of train paths is only one step in the overall process of managing railway infrastructure capacity. In practice, train paths are often modified after being allocated. Modifications of train paths may be required both on the demand side (railway undertakings), e.g. due to changes to operational or commercial needs, or on the offer side (infrastructure managers), e.g. due to unanticipated infrastructure restrictions resulting from breakdowns or works scheduled on short notice. On the German network, 60% of train paths are modified after being allocated ( Figure 12 ). Figure 12Modifications of freight train paths after allocation on the network of DB Netz AG Source. DB Netz AG In principle, the Regulation does not impede infrastructure managers from involving corridor one-stops in modifications of train paths. However, this has not happened systemically in practice. As a precondition, such an operational roles would require infrastructure managers to dedicate more human resources to the one-stop shops (typically one full-time equivalent, see the analysis of the governance structure above). The fact that the Regulation does not assign the one-stop shop with responsibilities with respect to train path modifications has the practical effect that railway undertakings in many cases still have to get in touch with individual infrastructure managers. Obviously, this significantly reduces the facilitation effect of the one-stop shop. Lack of integration of integration of the pre-construction approach in overall capacity management As outlined above, the introduction ‘pre-arranged train paths’ and ‘reserve capacity’ fundamentally changes the approach of capacity allocation by initiating the process of on the capacity offer side. However, this change in approach applies to international freight trains, while all other types of traffic, i.e. all passenger and domestic freight trains, are not covered by this new regime. This creates challenges for practical implementation on the European rail network which consists mainly in mixed-used lines accommodating all types of traffic: Safeguarding sufficient quantity of capacity for freight traffic by reserving pre-arranged capacity inevitably results in a means that the capacity for all other market segments has to be pre-arranged as well. This is particularly true for the sections of the European network most relevant for international traffic, where up to ten freight trains per hour have to share capacity with passenger trains. It appears that infrastructure managers were not able – or, to a certain extent, willing – to make this step. ·Limiting the facilitation effect for international traffic to only a subset of the European network, has not shown to be feasible in practice: 86% of the train paths allocated via the one-stop shops in 2019 include sections which cannot be accommodated by pre-arranged train paths either because they are not on the RFC network or because the needs of the railway undertakings are too specific to anticipate them. The one-stop shops have tried to better align their offer with market needs. Some improvements include train paths better coordinated with demand, capacity coordinated with terminals, the offer of pre-arranged train paths with longer train length than normally permissible. However, these attempts have not resulted in widespread results yet. Railway undertakings most frequently cite the following reasons for not requesting higher volumes of capacity via the corridor one-stop shops ( Table 5 ): ·Shortcomings of the IT tool, both in terms of accuracy and completeness of data and in terms of functionalities of the tool itself;

·Insufficient quantity and quality of the capacity offered by the one-stop shops, in terms of speed, train length etc.; ·Insufficient advantages of capacity allocated by the one-stop shops as regards reliability, notably protection against modification due to infrastructure works. ·Lack of harmonisation of the process following the allocation limits the facilitation effect of the one-stop shops, i.e. the requirement to interact with individual infrastructure managers remains. Table 5Reasons preventing railway undertakings from requesting higher volumes of capacity via the corridor one-stop shops Which were the most important factors preventing railway undertakings from requesting higher volumes of capacity via the C-OSS? Factor Important Unimportant Not relevant Do not know Insufficient quality and quantity of the pre-arranged train paths and reserve capacity at the moment of publication (e.g., commercial speed, train length, etc.) 29 2 3 1 Lack of cross-border harmonisation of the process following allocation of pre-arranged train paths (at X-7.5) limits the facilitation effect (i.e., the need to interact with several IMs remains and the COSS is actually an additional interface) 17 10 7 1 The IT tool for requesting and allocating capacity via the corridor one-stop shops (PCS) is not satisfactory in terms of functionality and usability 27 5 4 1 The IT tool for requesting and allocating capacity via the corridor one-stop shops (PCS) is not satisfactory in terms of the completeness and accuracy of data (e.g. it is not up-to-date due to missing interfaces with national IT systems for timetabling) 32 2 1 1 Pre-arranged train paths and reserve capacity do not offer significant advantages over capacity allocated by individual infrastructure managers in terms of reliability (e.g., protection against modifications due to capacity restrictions due to wor