Is your planning system ready...?

Europe has a very dense railway network; however, it lacks harmonization across the states’ national railway systems.

Since 1990s, the EU and its member states have been working together to develop a policy, which would support and promote the idea of “a better connected, safe and sustainable railway network.”

The policy includes a set of provisions that aim to make the railway market more open, harmonized, and safe. Financially, the implementation of the policy is supported by several financial programmes, including funding of “strategic investment projects in the areas of transport, digital and energy.”

The most recent development within the policy is a “proposal on new measures to better manage and coordinate European rail traffic” presented by the Commission in July 2023.

The proposal focuses on “setting out mechanisms for coordination between national infrastructure managers and others involved in running cross-border train services”, including the incentives on how to respect capacity-related commitments. The document does include “rules on the digitalisation of capacity management”, which provide a set of requirements for digital tools used by infrastructure managers.

The downside of the rules will be the additional complexity to the planning process of Infrastructure Managers for both, traffic and capacity management, including maintenance planning. Additional constraints, increased cross-country informational flow and the need for regular to regulatory body – are only a few of the additional pieces to the complex rail puzzle. Is your system ready to solve the puzzle?

More details on the Rail policy can be found via the European Council Website.

The full proposal document can be accessed via the official website of European Union.