Over the last five years, the railway infrastructure development has met a strong impetus. At European level, the ideas of expanding infrastructure have been given form on the basis of Trans European Networks (TENs). Despite this enthusiasm, the rail cargo transport does not flourish. Together with Trans-European Rail-Freight Freeways (TERFF), the new `Betuwelijn' infrastructure (still to be constructed) must provide a new impulse to the rail cargo transport. A next question could be whether these developments will be sufficient to establish a real modal split. At this moment, shippers and intermodal carriers only develop direct point to point connections. The influence of priority and the integral dependencies between several traces on the capacity available for freight transport should strongly be taken into consideration in planning new railway infrastructure. Therefore, integral capacity analysis should be embedded in the process of policymaking. In the authors' opinion, the method of capacity analysis is the only way to determine whether the infrastructure development is on the right track. (A)
Samenvatting