LivingRAIL will elaborate prospective and normative scenarios investigating possible evolutions leading to a reduction of the environmental harm of transport and in the same time to increase or at least maintain our quality of life. The scenarios will be detailed by trends in society, policy, economics, spatial planning, urban development, technology and transport sector operations to gain profound understanding of the sector interrelations. With the help of these detailed assessments the project will elaborate a rail map out of alternative pathways to approach the 2050 vision from todays situation.

Based on today’s best practice the analytical work will investigate how the railways and related transport modes can develop technically and in organisational and operational terms to achieve the 2050 targets and how spatial and urban planning, transport policy and other areas can contribute to achieve the 2050 targets. A broad set of interviews and workshops using visioning and road mapping techniques will be conducted.

LivingRAIL will foster an intensive dialogue between politics, rail sector, spatial planning actors and civil society to develop jointly technology pathways and feasible organisational options to implement the vision 2050. The target groups: political decision makers, railways, rail supply industry, transportation providers, spatial planning authorities, transport associations, passengers organisations and academia will be involved in the dialogue process from the very start. Thus the LivingRAIL results will be checked in the reality and that will substantially increase their practical importance and pave the way towards implementing the finding.