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Of roads and trains: Towards a common CENTROPE infrastructure agenda
From new railway stations to new motorway links – large infrastructure projects loom in CENTROPE and will improve the region’s competitiveness and quality of life. However, huge gaps remain in the grid of capable and up to date facilities. The CENTROPE Infrastructure Needs Assessment pilot project will lay the foundation for improved cross-regional cooperation.
By knocking yawning gaps into the familiar cityscape, construction has begun in earnest on completely new railway stations in Brno and Vienna. While in Brno preparatory work is conducted to start work on the buildings in 2012, the first structures of the Vienna station can already be observed from a highly popular watchtower right next to the construction site. Together with the likes of Berlin or Liège – where Meinhard von Gerkan and Santiago Calatrava left their marks – the two destinations in CENTROPE will soon be part of the handful of big European cities which have received a completely new main station, providing for contemporary travel standards and adding landmark architecture to the urban fabric.
The Vienna station, to be partly opened in December 2012 and completed two years later, will end Vienna’s traditional dependence on terminus stations and render the city a true nodal point in the Central European passenger rail network. Built by Vienna architects Albert Wimmer and Ernst Hoffmann (the latter also known for planning St. Pölten’s government quarter) and Zurich architect Theo Hotz, the terminal will serve as single starting point for all long-distance trains and impress travelers with its sculptural rooftop design. Like in Vienna, the ‘Europoint’ station in Brno is to replace transport infrastructures stemming from the 19th century and will allow for a much more efficient railway operation after completion in 2015. In a truly Centropean twist, this station too is being built by two Viennese architects, Andreas Fellerer and Czech-born Jiří Vendl, who envisage a spacious terminal with ample transfer possibilities to other means of public and individual transport. The similarities stretch further: in both cities, construction of new stations is seen as a major opportunity for urban development in the midst of the historically grown city and the new stations will mark the middle of whole new city quarters for living, education, business and leisure.
Beyond the flagship projects: a sometimes scandalous state of affairs
All set and well under way then in the realm of infrastructure development in CENTROPE? Not quite. Shiny as the two new stations will be, what’s in between still is – and for the foreseeable future will remain to be – a shamble. More than one and a half train hours between Brno and Vienna on a mostly dead straight line means an average speed of just 90 km/h on a supposed Trans-European corridor. The same goes for the link between Bratislava main station and Vienna where it takes the ‘regional express’ trains 70 minutes on a similarly straight line, which makes for a whopping average speed of 55 km/h. The sad truth for many cross-border commuters, but also for transit transport seeking a speedy passage through CENTROPE, is that many rail connections remain utterly uncompetitive. Besides the Győr-Vienna-St.Pölten axis, which sees heavy investment, in particular north-south connections are in need for a speeding up, be it from Bratislava to Brno or from Szombathely to Sopron. Motorists jammed in a convoy of lorries and despairing of the lack of an uninterrupted clearway between Vienna and Brno – and thus towards Prague or Berlin – are likewise affected by the grave bottlenecks which still hamper the full exploitation of the region’s economic potential.
From infrastructure needs assessment towards coordinated planning
It’s not that decision-makers are not aware of the most pressing needs. Indeed, all four countries know detailed plans for upgrading the transport infrastructures and the whereabouts of extended roads, new motorways and reconstructed railway lines. However, there is the flipside: in neither country cross-border links with CENTROPE partners really top the infrastructure extension agenda. In the face of budgetary strains, but also due to the lack of a forceful political lobby, many projects already in the pipeline will not see realization until the end of the decade or even beyond. This sluggish pace of infrastructure investment, which is by no means adequate to the region’s economic development, up to now has been accompanied by a rather relaxed approach concerning coordination of infrastructure development on a cross-regional level. This has to change: the ‘CENTROPE Infrastructure Needs Assessment’ will not only create a much more comprehensive view on CENTROPE as an entity in need of multilaterally coordinated infrastructures, but will also initiate a process where stakeholders from all partner regions can find common ground on the priorities and coordination methods of the infrastructure cooperation agenda. The CENTROPE Capacity pilot project to be carried out by a transnational consortium was launched at the end of March 2011, will deliver results until 2012 and look into infrastructure development far beyond pure transport aspects.
Because cooperation is unavoidable
How crucial such a thorough assessment and collaborative preparation of major projects is, can be exemplified by the plan to build a new circular motorway around the Bratislava conurbation (the D4, until 2019), linking directly into a new freeway towards Vienna north of the Danube, where until now no serious road border crossing between the two countries exists (the S8, of undetermined completion well beyond 2016).
As a large-scale intervention it will have numerous repercussions and lead to further development questions on a smaller scale, where the regions more than anybody else are called upon: In terms of regional competitiveness, the fast road will facilitate cross-border supply chains – but only as far as enterprises seize upon the opportunities. In terms of settlement development it may allow for new, highly accessible business locations and residential areas – or instigate an uncontrolled and unsustainable sprawl of dislocated structures. It may become a building block of a truly Central European logistics hub – but only if multimodal facilities, not least at the Danube ports and the airports are developed accordingly. It may enormously increase inner-regional accessibility – but also kill off any notion of appreciable public transport between the two capitals in case the rail links are not improved simultaneously. It will create new opportunities for cross-border labour mobility by widening the radius for feasible workday commuting, e.g. between the Trnava region and Vienna, but also towards western Hungary due to it southern wing across the Danube. And it brings up sensitive ecological issues, starting with the appropriate spot where to cross the Morava River and its National Park – an environmentalist initiative has already raised its voice.
In other words, the ‘Ring of the Regions’ as it is also known, is a huge project that will change the face of CENTROPE by creating a new road transport geography. Planning together and jointly managing its diverse consequences is a task well worth tackling, in particular as long-term and sustained cooperation is required. In the end, comprehensive, consistent and mutually coordinated development may be achieved – a far cry from the story of two 21st-century high-tech train stations connected by a pair of 19th-century rail tracks.
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