FIRE - Freight Information in the Railway Environment
Overview
Background & policy context:
Rail transport for freight has shown a decrease in market share compared
to road transport. This trend is in contrast with the role rail transport
should play as main-haul mode in a door-to-door intermodal service view.
To play this role, suitable performances have to be provided by rail
services in order to fulfil the stringent requirements originating from
just-in-time and lean production concepts. One of the reasons for the
competitive advantage of road transport is today the provision of easy
access of transport and logistic service providers to commercial and
task-related information. There is a clear need for making more accessible
the information on rail operators’ tariffs, services offers and procedures
as well as those on current location and conditions of the cargoes being
transported by rail.
Objectives:
The main project objective was to build a prototype of an information service concerning rail-based international freight transport. The prototype was intended to make information available to the Rail Cargo Companies (RCC) and, from these, to Transport Service Providers (TSP) and Logistic Service Providers (LSP). Retrievable information shall include commercial data on the RCC offer, such as services and tariffs, and progress of on-going, cross-border transport tasks, both on wagon and train basis, such as positioning and delays. Specific objectives of the project were:
- to define a general architecture and function set for the prototype, and to
- to set up an on-field test of the prototype based on a subset of these functions.
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