Today was the second day of the IX International Conference “Transport Service Market: Cooperation and Partnership” in Moscow. The Conference’s strategic partner is RZD JSC and the organisers are the company Business Dialogue and the business magazine RZD Partner

Day two of the Conference was devoted to roundtables on several topical aspects of the development of the railway industry. Almost all of them were dominated by the key topic of the Conference: “Interaction between the Industry and the State: Towards Formalising Mutual Responsibility.”

The round table Financing of the Industry in Present-Day Conditions focused on financing infrastructure projects. The annual RZD investment programme deficit is about 400 billion roubles, according to the Transport Economics and Development Institute. For that reason, 230 million tonnes of newly produced freight will not be shipped until 2015, resulting in a total loss of up to 2 trillion roubles for the economy as a whole. Innokenty Ivanov, partner and head of the infrastructure and transport practice in Russia with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, predicts that the situation will become much more acute by 2020 when the industrial projects currently under construction hit full capacity. To stave it off, investment in development of the infrastructure must be made now.  “Russia needs a revolution in the infrastructure sphere because there is no time left for evolutionary change,” he stressed. There are many investment instruments but the state must play an active role and the rules of the game must be clearly defined if these instruments are to be effective, the participants in the round table agreed.

There is no deficit of wagon repair capacity in Russia. This was the consensus among the participants in the round table devoted to forming a competitive rolling stock repair market. They noted, however, that the repair facilities are unevenly distributed throughout the country, with virtually none in the Far East and in the Trans-Baikal area. As a result, owners have to incur extra costs to bring their rolling stock to the repair facilities.

The main issue at the round table Private Pools: Optimising Control and Pricing was the proposed government scheme for bringing private operators’ pools under RZD management. Vice President of the railways division of OOO FESCO Transportation Group and Managing Director of OOO Transgarant Alexey Grom said operator companies would consider specific proposals on the part of RZD JSC and the government but the terms of possible consolidation are still unclear. The pool may be handed over on condition that every wagon brings a daily profit of 1,300-1,400 roubles, according to Dmitry Korolev, managing director of the non-commercial partnership Council of Participants in the Railway Rolling Stock Operators Market. Yet, because the consolidated pool will also carry low-income socially sensitive freight, many round table participants expressed doubts that such a rate was realistic.

What impedes quality services for freight owners: shortage of rolling stock or lack of proper market regulation? This was the question members of another round table grappled. Among a multitude of other problems, the participants stressed flaws in the legal framework governing railway transport, which fails to provide adequate protection for the interests of freight owners in disputes with RZD, for example, over compliance with delivery deadlines.

The possibilities of innovative solutions in modernising the infrastructure were discussed at the round table Transport Construction: Innovative Solutions for Infrastructure Modernisation. The participants shared experience of designing and using modular bridge structures, the prospects for using composite materials and ballast-free structures of the railway upper part. Particular attention was paid to modern environmental requirements at all stages of infrastructure projects.

The outlook for creating regular specialised container trains was the subject of the round table Container Trains: Real Competition for Road Transport. Leading operator companies shared their experience and expressed the hope that the government would introduce early regulatory measures to boost development of that segment. Boris Lapidus, moderator of the round table and Director General of OAO VNIIZhT (National Railway Transport Research Institute), urged the need for competent marketing to attract container freight to the RZD network. “It is necessary to explain to clients the financial benefits of speedy delivery, which ultimately compensate for the high railway tariff,” he stressed.

The final event of the Conference was the Discussion Club, whose participants looked at the key aspects of carrying the core types of freight and tried to work out a consolidated position of all the stakeholders concerning the best ways to optimise the carriage process.

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