Alpine railways Westbahn gets to grips
It’s now almost a year since Austria’s first long-distance open-access operator took to the rails. Erwin Reidinger looks back at the challenges encountered by Westbahn in its formative months.
ECEMBER 2011 witnessed an important event in the history of Austria’s railways, with the launch of the country’s first open-access inter-city services. Westbahn operates 13 return services a day on the Vienna - Linz - Salzburg - Freilassing route, providing a two-hourly service in competition with Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB).
D And the competition is intense.
Westbahn entered the market with ticket prices set at 50% of ÖBB’s full fare, equivalent to the maximum discount offered to holders of ÖBB’s Vorteilscard, across all of its services. Naturally ÖBB was eager to ensure that the new entrant did not deplete revenues on its most lucrative route, on which it has enjoyed a monopoly for so long. It responded by discounting fares, heavily in some cases, which has hit Westbahn revenues hard. ÖBB offered a
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limited number of Vienna - Salzburg tickets at just ƒ19, and Vienna - Linz at ƒ9. This undercut Westbahn, which in turn was forced to discount its own fares to compete. Westbahn also alleges ÖBB attempted
to prevent it from accessing station facilities. The Austrian rail regulator is currently adjudicating on a case brought by Westbahn, which claims ÖBB banned Westbahn promotional staff from working at stations. Another issue is the display of real-time passenger information on connecting ÖBB services on Westbahn trains. This case is now at the European Court of Justice.
Nonetheless, tumbling prices have been greeted enthusiastically by passengers. Westbahn trains are well loaded, with around 7500 passengers on a typical weekday and 12,000 during weekends. ÖBB also reports improved
loadings on many of its services, and overall long-distance ticket sales rose by 3% in the first half of this year, compared with the corresponding period in 2011, although the extent of discounting on the Vienna - Salzburg route meant this was not accompanied by revenue growth.
Indeed, the price war has forced both sides to look at how they can protect their revenue. As a result, Westbahn accepts season tickets on certain sections of the route, such as Vienna - St Pölten, which draws in plenty of passengers but only limited revenue from the integrated ticketing organisation issuing these tickets. The ambitious business plan by CEO Dr Stefan Wehinger, co-founder of the company and a former CEO of ÖBB’s passenger division, had foreseen positive results after just one year of operation, but this target will not be
IRJ October 2012
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