Freight Transport Innovations of European Railways- New Market Chances and Technological Perspectives

Stanislav Božičnik

Konrad Schliephake

Abstract

The paper analyses the main technical and economic elementsof the cwrent European rail freight market and presentsthe basic concepts of possible new technologies in the railfreight system. They would enable the railways to enter the morerewarding niches of the freight transport market. In an attemptto understand better the problems of introducing innovationsinto the transport sector this paper also considers the theoreticalframework and analyses the implementation paths of the proposedtechnological innovations. New technologies are confrontedwith various barriers and difficulties created by the existingand dominant technological paradigms. These are oftenpoweiful enough to prevent the introduction of alternatives andpromising innovations. The empirical part of the paper focuseson the possibilities of combining the existing innovative railfreight technologies which could, with the appropriate organizationalsolutions (time-tables) and political support, increasethe competitiveness of the rail freight transport in new andpromising market segments.