A few weeks ago, a first pilot container freight train arrived from China in Rügen, Germany. It had crossed Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia again where it was put on a ferry in Kaliningrad. From there it crossed the Baltic Sea for the Sassnitz-Mukran freight port in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, to continue on land to Hamburg. Reportedly, this journey took less than a year to prepare. The 10,000 km journey took 12 days, at an average speed of almost 35 km/h, about twice the speed with which freight travels on trains within Germany.
The train operated under what China calls their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Meanwhile, journalists have baptized the BRI the New Silk Road, originally a botched initiative by the U.S. The BRI is a gigantic rail connectivity vision to link markets along and adjacent to the historical silk road and far beyond. More than a dozen countries in Southern, Central and Eastern Asia, Europe, and even Africa are part of the BRI – New Silk Road. This train could operate without investments in infrastructure: All it took was governments along the route to endorse it and private sector initiative.
While Europe muses about how to adapt to climate change it fails to overcome the idiosyncrasies and parochial interests of over two dozen railroad administrations within its own borders. It thereby fails to create a transportation system that would compete in a sustainable manner with cars, trucks, and planes – with much lower carbon emissions.
Why is this not achievable?