Overview
The strategy "High speed rail" is a very complex system, comprised of a lot of elements (track layout, civil works, bridges, tunnels, track, switches, stations situation and type, rolling stock from technical point of view etc.
One of the activities of the High speed rail strategy is the 9th UIC World Congress on High Speed Rail, organised by the International Union of Railway (UIC) together with East Japan Railway Company(EJRC), concluded on 10 July. With over 2,200 visitors in total over the three days, the congress ended with highly positive feedback from the participants.
The motto of the congress being “Celebrate the past, Design the Future”, the conference was divided into two parts, aiming to learn from experience and analyse the opportunities and challenges ahead.
Each part ended with a round table during which invited guests expressed their views on topics as diverse as:
- Speed,
- Interoperability,
- The digital revolution,
- The environment,
- InnovationMobility,
- Inter and intramodal competition,
- The station of today and tomorrow,
- New transport technologies,
- Security standards
Funding
Results
The goal of the "zero paper" congress was achieved with the distribution of tablets to all attendees thanks to the Toshiba sponsor. Participants had everything in hand in a few clicks: the programme, corporate information fromUIC and JR East, the two organisers, the opportunity to ask questions directly to the speakers or to vote on several issues, speaker presentations, etc.
The content of the conference was ambitious with the objective of covering several topics related to high speed during 35 parallel sessions: infrastructure, rolling stock, operations, management, distribution and marketing, economics and finance, railway governance, etc.
A new concept was to dedicate a full session to the academic world in order to connectit to the training of future managers, experts and researchers.
Innovation aspects
Both in terms of design and substance, the congress this year took innovation to a new level.