You're listening to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on the fourth railway package.

Railways were the first modern means of transport. Without them, the Industrial Revolution may not even have happened.

But today, the sector faces numerous challenges, from fragmentation to high operational

costs, regulatory loopholes, administrative and technical barriers. The fourth railway package seeks

to address these challenges and move closer to a single European railway area. Want to know what's

coming down the track? Stay with us.

The EU has roughly 220,000 kilometres of railway track,

along which millions of passengers and millions of tonnes of goods are transported every day.

It's also an important economic sector, employing over half a million people in the EU.

But the sector faces numerous challenges, starting with the long and slow decline of rail's share of freight

and its flat-curve share of passenger transport compared to other modes such as the car, buses and planes.

But one of the biggest challenges comes down to its high costs.

Without public funding, the renewal

of infrastructure in rolling stock would be extremely difficult. So this dependency has favoured

the creation of rail monopolies in many countries, and these are proving difficult to break.

The EU rail industry is also highly fragmented due to self-regulated national systems

and faces cumbersome administrative and

technical barriers. So since the late 1980s, the European Commission has worked to address these

challenges, proposing three sets of measures to move towards a single European rail market.

The three railway packages adopted up to 2012 have brought us closer to that objective, notably by

ensuring separation between infrastructure managers and real service providers by opening railway

services to increasing competition and facilitating access to real systems and services.

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