Overview
The current activities in EUROPTIRAILS are not under the direct management of UIC; hence, the role of the UIC infrastructure department is to disseminate the results of the projects to its members. At the same time, UIC facilitated exchanges with UIC projects to assure the integration of all the relevant IM applications (as EUROPTIRAILS) in the IT platform (IM-IT Strategy) and European Performance Regime.
In 2007, further dissemination activity was organised in conjunction with RNE in order to be beneficial to all IMs. In April 2007, the consortium presented a report and the implementation phase started in July 2007. A seminar was held at UIC on April 24, 2007 to encourage knowledge sharing.
The EUROPTIRAILS project main objective is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of train running on European rail corridors in the operational range through information sharing and support between IMs for Customers (RU). Six railways and a consultant railway take part in the EUROPTIRAILS consortium in collaboration with the European Commission. The implementation of the Europtirails web interface helps reduce delays on international corridors, improves quality of service, optimises the capacity offer, and communicates the expected time of arrival for customers. The three main models (functions) of the Europtirails are information, monitoring and path assembly.
This project supports international train management by delivering train data on international passenger and freight trains. The train data are extracted directly from the infrastructure managers own systems and include:
- current and past train location
- agreeed daily timetable information
- delay information and reasons for delay
In addition Europtirails is the only IT system able to provide information on international train runs in Europe.
Funding
Results
The key results are four separate outputs:
- EUROPTIRAILS Real-Time Information is the web-based application which provides real-time data on international trains and can be used with a web broser.
- EUROPTIRAILS Reporting Function provides performance reports after the train run. The RNE customer surveys held in 2006 and 2008 have shown that the demand for this function is very high on the RU side. This function enables to create various reports on train runs.
- EUROPTIRAILS Data Exchange Function is already in place and is being used by a number of IMs. Filtering options (by company/train/point/other criteria) is in place by November 2010.
- EUROPTIRAILS EPR Function is the IT solution specifically designed for the EPR project. The European Performance Regime (EPR) project has its origins in EU Directive 2001/14, Article 11, which stipulates that a Performance Regime should be implemented throughout the railway network within each Member State.