PROCUREMENT OF ROLLING STOCK REQUIRED FOR THE REGIONAL RAIL SERVICES FRANCHISE TENDER
PRESS RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
The Competition Authority's report on the procedures for procuring rolling stock for local rail transport: the need to hasten liberalisation procedures and timing
The Competition Authority has submitted a report to the Speakers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, the Minister of Regional Affairs and the Presidents of all the Regions regarding the procedures for procuring rolling stock for the provision of local rail transport services.
The deadline (31 December 2003) for the award of local rail transport services under the tender called by the Regional governments (under Legislative Decree 422/1977, amended by section 45 of law 166/2002) is fairly imminent. This ha brought to light the problem of procuring the rolling stock required to provide the rail services, while virtually all the existing rolling stock belongs to Trenitalia S.p.A., the current service franchisee.
The Authority has therefore drawn attention to the existence of a competition problem, which might thwart the liberalisation of the local rail transport service and make it difficult to prepare the invitations to tender and create competitive tendering problems for any railway companies, other than Trenitalia, considering that the existing rolling stock cannot be deemed to be "essential resources", with the result that Trenitalia cannot be placed under an obligation to contract out its stock to others.
In order to encourage the liberalisation of local rail transport services, the Authority has therefore suggested that the regional authorities which own rolling stock assets should immediately award the service to any company that can guarantee their most efficient management and use, placing any rolling stock they own at that company's disposal.
If a regional authority does not own any rolling stock assets it should ensure that rolling stock availability should not be a factor of discrimination between the competing tenderers for the rail services. They should therefore award the tender to the company guaranteeing the best conditions for the whole service.
To do this the regional authorities should enable the successful bidder to have access to rolling stock which is not easily obtainable (considering that there are no secondhand rolling stock markets, and no rolling stock leasing companies, and mindful of the lengthy rolling stock manufacturing times, which vary from two to four years), and provide that the transport service comes onstream only after the shortest period has passed, to enable the successful bidder to procure the rolling stock needed to run the service.
This method would have the advantage of encouraging the development of both the rolling stock manufacturing market and the rolling stock leasing market, attracting new truly competitive transport operators, and improving the quality of the local rail transport services.
Lastly, with regard to the risk that liberalising local rail transport services may be further postponed because of the new statutory deadline extensions, the Authority emphasised that if the deadline for granting franchises using procedures other than public tendering are put back from 31 December 2003 to 31 December 2006, the tenders should be called immediately and on the basis of the criteria indicated above. This would guarantee that the service could become operational by the latter deadline date, taking account of the time needed for the successful tendering companies to procure the rolling stock required.
Rome, 14 July 2003