TREND - Towards new Rail freight quality and concepts in the European Network in respect to market Demand
Overview
Background & policy context:
Despite the growth in international freight transport by rail, the even stronger growth by road has meant that rail's market share continued to fall. The European Commission's 2001 Transport White Paper set out the reasons for this relative loss of competitiveness: the most fundamental cause being lack of interoperability, both at physical level (railway infrastructure and rolling stock) and at administrative level (legal, operational, etc).
The White Paper also designed a general framework of actions which, if applied by the relevant parties, would strengthen this sector and contribute to advance an innovative network of competitive integrated Pan-European services.
Based on the development in the freight sector in recent years and the near future, several investigations and measures were started to strengthen the rail sector. The TREND project served a role as the connecting part between recent and future research and development projects, with the aim of summarising and examining the development within all 'important' topics and defining and providing methodologies and themes for the next steps.
Objectives:
The main objective of the TREND project was to accelerate the development of predominantly nationally aligned systems into a single, integrated Pan-European system approach which will result into a more competitive rail freight service offer compared to road transport.
Part A of TREND aimed to gather all necessary information to assess the general progress in the establishment of a European railway area, while Part B then analysed the prerequisites for innovative and new concepts for Trans-European rail freight services. This paved the way for Part C in which a new Integrated Project was proposed and defined.
A core part of Part A of the project was the provision of an 'evaluation scheme for integration' which is composed of a set of sub-indices covering amongst others the issues of liberalisation, free access, interoperability etc. TREND also had the objective of recommending a coherent conception of individual actions as a 'breakdown' of the White Paper's general framework.
Main topic areas studied were:
- Methodology/Best Practices: Analysis of existing/envisaged shape and content of co-operation in rail freight business based on previous corridor studies.
- Application to new corridors: Choice and analysis of five European freight corridors and recommendation of those most suitable to configure a successful Integrated Project.
- Innovative Rail Freight Services: Elaboration of business cases for future oriented rail freight services on the above recommended corridors.
- Quality Standards: Development of quality standards for the different relations in rail freight service.
- Infrastructure Development Scheme/GIS: Elaboration of infrastructure development schemes related to the preparation of the IP and visualisation of results by means of a Geographic Information System (GIS).
- Business Model for International Co-operation: Elaboration of an appropriate business model and rules to serve as a basis for future international co-operation between relevant players.
Methodology:
Part A: The approach was to gather all the necessary information to assess general progress of a European railway area. This involved the following tasks:
- A1: Development of the design of the knowledge base and concept for information gathering in 13 selected European countries, followed by surveys and investigations.
- A2: Horizontal analysis of the different national institutional arrangements and organisational structures, and assessing these, including deducing any links between organisational aspects and progress made towards rail freight interoperability.
- A3: Summarising the results with the aim of obtaining a comprehensive picture of the current status in the European railway area with regard to barriers and opportunities relevant to establishing pan-European freight corridors, and recommendations for policy support.
Part B: The methodology includes the provision of a 'Tender Specification' for the envisaged Integrated Project 'New Concepts for Trans-European Rail Freight Services'. To ensure these objectives the TREND consortium assembled a group of stakeholders, not only representing all components and sides of rail freight services (various types of rail customers, railway undertakings, infrastructure managers, intermodal operators, consultants, university) but who partly also operate as competitors. Main tasks were:
- B1: Analysis of existing and envisaged types of co-operation aimed at alleviating or removing barriers to international freight transport by rail. Five corridors were covered: Netherlands - Italy via Germany and Switzerland; Netherlands - Italy via Belgium and France; Germany - Italy via Austria; Germany - Spain/Portugal via France; and Ukraine - Spain/Portugal via Hungary, Slovenia, Italy and France.
- B2: Choice and analysis of five supplementary freight corridors.
- B3: Elaboration of appropriate concepts (business cases) to meet the requirements of Trans-European rail freight.
- B4: Development of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and quality standards.
- B5: Elaboration of an infrastructure development scheme on up to ten corridors.
- B6: Elaboration of a business model (open platform) concerning operational processes and equipment as a basis for international co-operation between Rail Undertakings (RUs).
- B7: Development of conclusions and recommendations.
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