Road Wars : Despite its green rhetoric and vaunted rail systems, Europe can't wean itself from an addiction to big rigs.

The smoke has long since cleared from the narrow, two-lane tunnel beneath Mont Blanc where 39 people were burned to death or suffocated in March 1999. And the smoke has cleared, too, from the bonfires lit by protesters hoping to stop the 11-kilometer passage from reopening to heavy truck traffic last month. But as thousands of the big rigs roll in and out of the mountain every day, they are bringing with them the smell of trouble.

The dangers of transporting freight by road are clear: 12 people died in Austria's Tauern Tunnel in May 1999, another 11 were killed in Switzerland's Saint-Gothard last October after trucks crashed and caught fire. Yet the fact remains that Europe's single market for goods and services is expanding faster than common-sense policies about how to move those goods around. The EU is expected to add 10 more Eastern European members by the end of 2004; by 2010, the European Commission predicts transcontinental freight traffic will have risen 50 percent, and much of that will have to cross the enormous obstacle of the Alps. Right now the only practical way for most heavy traffic to get through is by truck and tunnel. And while that could change if safer and cleaner rail lines were opened, the chances are that won't happen anytime soon.

That may come as some surprise to foreign visitors, who are often impressed with Europe's high-speed passenger trains. Yet when it comes to moving freight, Europe is for truckers. Several private trucking companies have adapted quickly and creatively to the demands of European unification. Some of the bigger truckers trace cargoes with the Global Positioning System and sophisticated computers. And if trucks also bring more road hazards and pollution, at present there is no alternative. Right now only 8 percent of European merchandise moves by rail, compared with more than 40 percent in the United States. Delays are so common that the average speed for freight is about 18km an hour. As a European Commission white paper noted last year, "that's slower than an ice-breaker opening a shipping lane in the Baltic Sea!"

The railways have had trouble outgrowing a heritage of national rivalries and open warfare between Europe's countries. The result is what another European Commission report calls "a mosaic of badly interconnected national systems." Language barriers remain a problem, requiring crew changes at some borders. Switching systems and signals differ. In some places, as between Spain and France, the tracks are different widths. Most trains are electric, but voltages differ. Weight and length allowances vary.

And efficiency is more of a dream than a goal. Europe's railroads still have to deal with "phantom trains" that run so late they combine with others and disappear from the railroad's records. A report by International Rail Road Union president Werner Kulpe in 2000 noted that of 20,000 international transport trains checked in Europe, only about half were punctual. In an era when many companies depend on "just-in-time" inventories to make a profit, railroads are rarely on time at all. Nor does such inefficiency come cheap. The Continent's railways are almost all state-owned monopolies, and, according to the European Commission, those states' taxpayers fork out more than $30 billion a year to keep the trains running... badly.

Yet there is little official enthusiasm for changing the system. Michel Charlet, mayor of the town of Chamonix at the entrance to the Mont Blanc tunnel, has lobbied in vain with successive governments in Paris to close the tunnel to heavy trucks. Environmental groups like Alp Action have taken the ...