Rail Service Facilities: The Missing Piece in Europe’s Railway Growth Strategy

The European Union has set ambitious objectives for rail. Whether with the High-Speed Rail Plan, the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy or broader decarbonisation goals, the direction of travel is clear: more passengers on trains, more freight on rail and overall a stronger role for rail in the European transport system. Achieving these objectives, however, requires looking beyond railway tracks run by infrastructure managers and trains operated by railway undertakings.

For the last three decades, railway policy has focused on investing in rail infrastructure (mostly tracks) and promoting competition in rail services. Considerable effort has been devoted to opening markets, ensuring non-discriminatory access to railway infrastructure and more recently reforming capacity allocation processes. These initiatives have delivered important benefits. However, they often overlook a fundamental reality: railway services depend on a wide range of complementary assets and facilities. Trains require stations, depots, maintenance facilities, refuelling installations, marshalling yards, terminals and other service facilities. Without sufficient capacity in these facilities, growth in train services will ultimately face a bottleneck.

Discussions at the 28th Florence Rail Forum showed that service facilities are an important issue in railway regulation. They are a critical component of the railway value chain, and their capacity must evolve consistently with the growth targets established for passenger and freight transport. A railway system cannot expand sustainably if capacity only increases in terms of tracks while essential supporting facilities remain constrained.

At the same time, regulating service facilities presents unique challenges because the concept itself encompasses a remarkably diverse reality. The term ‘service facility’ covers assets with fundamentally different economic characteristics, ownership structures and competitive dynamics. Passenger stations in large metropolitan areas often display features of natural monopolies. Maintenance facilities may be owned by incumbent operators but could potentially be replicated under certain market conditions. Freight terminals can range from highly competitive facilities to strategic assets with significant market power. Marshalling yards, refuelling facilities and port-related railway installations each have distinct operational and economic characteristics.

This diversity raises an important question: how can the regulatory framework adequately address such heterogeneous facilities? The Recast Directive already defines different approaches to basic services, additional services and ancillary services. Discussions in the forum reinforced the fact that regulation should reflect the underlying economic reality of each facility. Facilities enjoying significant market power may justify stronger regulatory oversight. In contrast, facilities operating in competitive environments may require a lighter regulatory touch in order to preserve investment incentives and operational flexibility.

The challenge for policymakers is therefore not only to ensure fair access but also to design an asymmetrical regulatory framework capable of accommodating the diversity of service facilities. The objective should not be regulatory uniformity for its own sake but instead proportionality. Different facilities may require different solutions, while still operating under common principles of transparency and non-discrimination.

A second important conclusion emerging from the forum concerned the growing relevance of strategic planning. The debate on railway capacity management has progressively evolved from operational allocation issues to a broader strategic perspective. The new Capacity Regulation reflects this evolution. Capacity is increasingly understood as a system-wide issue requiring long-term planning, coordination between stakeholders and stronger integration between infrastructure development and service needs.

However, if strategic planning becomes the cornerstone of future railway capacity management, service facilities must be included in this framework. Historically, planning processes have focused primarily on infrastructure managers and railway undertakings. Service facility operators have often remained at the margins of these discussions. Yet some of the capacity constraints affecting railway services originate precisely at the interfaces between infrastructure and service facilities. A train path may be available but a maintenance slot may not. Infrastructure capacity may increase while terminal capacity remains unchanged. New operators may gain access to tracks but struggle to secure access to the facilities necessary to effectively provide services.

For this reason, future strategic planning exercises should systematically incorporate service facilities. Capacity strategies, stakeholder consultations, digital coordination tools and network planning processes should consider the entire railway ecosystem rather than only the railway infrastructure network. Better coordination between infrastructure managers and service facility operators is essential if Europe wants to optimise the use of existing assets and identify future investment needs.

A final challenge concerns investment. If passenger and freight traffic are expected to substantially grow in the coming decades, significant investments in service facilities will be required. This is particularly evident in areas such as rolling stock maintenance, freight terminals and intermodal facilities, where existing capacity may already be approaching its limits in some markets.

The first priority should be to remove unnecessary barriers that hinder investment. Across Europe, stakeholders frequently face difficulties related to land availability, urban planning procedures, environmental authorisations and permitting processes. These obstacles can delay projects for years and significantly increase investment costs. While environmental and planning safeguards remain necessary, policymakers should ensure that administrative procedures do not become an unintended barrier to railway development.

At the same time, regulatory frameworks should create the right incentives for investment. This applies to both existing operators and potential new entrants. Excessively rigid access obligations may discourage investment if investors perceive that they cannot obtain a reasonable return on their assets. Conversely, insufficient regulatory safeguards may allow strategic facilities to become sources of market foreclosure.

Finding the right balance between investment incentives and access obligations will therefore be one of the key regulatory challenges in the coming years. The objective should be to encourage capacity expansion while preserving competitive opportunities for railway undertakings. In some cases this may require innovative governance models, neutrality arrangements or specific mechanisms to support investment in strategic facilities.

Ultimately, discussion on service facilities reflected a broader evolution in European railway policy. The focus is gradually shifting from regulating individual components of the system to managing the railway network as an integrated ecosystem. If Europe is serious about achieving its railway growth ambitions, it cannot concentrate solely on tracks and train services. Capacity must grow along the entire value chain. With the right regulatory framework, effective strategic planning and strong investment incentives, service facilities can become a catalyst rather than a constraint for the future development of European rail.