AS the world’s leading economies stagger out of recession and record their first periods of meagre growth, the rail sector looks set to achieve much stronger growth than the overall economic performance of most countries, as investment in rail surges ahead.

THE 119 world leaders attending the United Nations’ COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen last month had yet to make any pronouncements as this issue of IRJ went to press. However, as transport accounts for 23% of global CO2 emissions, it is sure to feature in the final declaration. Rail transport, being the only good boy, amongst the different modes, has done an excellent job in promoting rail as the only green mode, but the question is whether this momentum can be maintained.

 

YOU don’t get to be the world’s second richest man and one of the world’s most successful investors by making bad investments. So Warren Buffett’s audacious decision to sink a cool $US 34 billion into one of North America’s largest railways, BNSF, is a huge vote of confidence in the future of rail transport. It is not that long ago that investors of the calibre of Buffett would not have touched railway stock with a barge pole, and for sure, they would have lost their shirts.

SWEDEN was the birthplace in the 1980s of one of the biggest and most controversial changes in the way railways are run - the separation of infrastructure management from train operations. Sweden is now pioneering an equally-controversial reform by merging the management of the national road and rail networks into one body along with the planning for roads, railways, airports and ports and the links between them.

 

WHILE there are encouraging signs that the worst economic recession since the Great Depression is bottoming out, it is already clear that some railfreight operators have weathered the storm far better than others. The shrewd operators have seized the moment to prepare themselves to take advantage of the recovery when it comes.