Friday Brief: RegioJet exits Poland’s rail market
Plus: Balkan freight operators sign MoU / Hyperloop sector suffers major collapse
RegioJet exits Poland’s domestic rail market
POLAND: Czech open-access operator RegioJet announced on 9 April it will end all domestic Polish services on 3 May, citing infrastructure barriers and what it described as predatory pricing by state rival PKP Intercity.
Domestic routes on the Kraków–Warsaw–Gdynia and Poznań–Warsaw corridors will close, while international services to Prague remain. Poland’s rail regulator UTK separately ruled on 7 April that RegioJet had breached passenger rights by cancelling 23 scheduled services in December 2025.
The exit follows less than eight months of domestic operations and surfaces wider questions about depot access, sales point restrictions, and asymmetric subsidy between open-access entrants and state-backed incumbents.
Balkan freight operators sign MoU on Budapest–Belgrade corridor
CROSS-BORDER: Three state freight operators have agreed to coordinate services on the newly opened Budapest–Belgrade line, aiming to restore cargo volumes not seen since the early 2000s.
Srbija Kargo, Rail Cargo Hungaria and North Macedonia’s ŽRSM Transport signed the memorandum of understanding on 8 April. The agreement covers electronic waybills, real-time tracking, simplified border procedures, and expanded container and semi-trailer services.
Commercial agreements between the three operators are not yet in place. Timetable coordination and slot allocation remain outstanding before joint services can run.
European hyperloop sector suffers second major collapse in 2026
INDUSTRY: A Valencia court has declared Spanish hyperloop startup Zeleros insolvent, the second major failure in Europe’s commercial hyperloop sector in 2026 after Dutch developer Hardt Hyperloop was declared bankrupt in early March.
Zeleros had participated in EU research programmes but had not moved beyond the development phase before the insolvency ruling. Hardt, the other developer to collapse this year, had demonstrated levitation and a lane-switch system at a 420-metre test facility in the Netherlands before its bankruptcy.
No hyperloop system has entered commercial service anywhere in the world.
Norrtåg launches EUR 337 million tender for 20 regional trains
SWEDEN: The Swedish northern rail operator has opened procurement for around 20 new regional trains at EUR 337 million, linked to the Tågvision 2040 capacity programme.
All four owner regions — Norrbotten, Västerbotten, Jämtland Härjedalen and Västernorrland — have committed financial guarantees, enabling formal procurement to proceed through AB Transitio. Delivery is targeted for 2031–2032, aligned with planned Norrbotniabanan service extensions.
Dutch defence contracts DB for military escort wagons
NETHERLANDS: The Netherlands has contracted Deutsche Bahn to provide two military escort wagons available on 10 days’ notice for pan-European defence materiel transports.
The wagons carry military personnel responsible for securing cargo in transit and are deployed on notification rather than held permanently attached to any train. The arrangement is separate from the Dutch Defence Movement and Transport Organisation’s own fleet of 448 freight wagons.
Europe’s rail liberalisation has a structural flaw
COMMENTARY: The rules say infrastructure and operations must be separated. What the rules do not say is that the separation must be real.
The piece examines 13 EU member states and groups them by regulatory structure and competitive outcome, finding no consistent relationship between ownership separation and functioning competition. France, Germany, Hungary and Poland are grouped together as holding-model markets where competition remains minimal or blocked.
The argument centres on the Fourth Railway Package’s permission for infrastructure managers to remain within the same holding group as operators — a design that, the commentary argues, makes it structurally impossible to assess whether access decisions are independent.
That’s The Rail Agenda for today. If someone in your network should be reading this, send it their way.