On 28-29 September 2026, UIC took part in the annual meeting of the Coordinating Group for Statistics on Transport (CGST) at Eurostat in Luxembourg.
The CGST reviewed the main achievements across its various workstreams as well as developments in transport statistics over the past year. Regarding railway transport, participants were briefed on the quality of railway statistics and informed that data collection for 2025 on regional transport and the railway network is expected to be completed by 31 December 2026 and 30 June 2027, respectively.
A pilot project conducted in cooperation with the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) will assess whether telematics data can complement existing statistics and reduce the reporting burden. The ERA also presented its new railway safety data-sharing system, its work on cost efficiency and its publications, highlighting a strong partnership with Eurostat.
The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE) provided an overview of recent and ongoing policy developments in the transport sector, including the revision of the Combined Transport Directive, which is relevant to promoting modal shift.
Finally, UIC presented Europe’s position in the international railway landscape, drawing on its upcoming Global Railway Statistics report.
Statistics Steering Committee (SSC) meeting
The Statistics Steering Committee met in Berlin on 6–7 October 2026, at the invitation of German Railways (DB). Discussions focused on two main topics: the harmonisation of train punctuality statistics and the collection of staff data for productivity indicators, particularly in the context of outsourcing.
Harmonising statistics on train cancellations
As a first step towards harmonising punctuality statistics, the committee agreed to work towards a common definition of cancelled trains, for example, “a scheduled passenger train that does not operate”.
However, practices differ between companies. Some of them classify a passenger train cancelled before a specified cut-off time (for example, 17:00 on the day before departure) as a “deprogrammed train” rather than a “cancelled train”. The cut-off time used to distinguish between these categories may therefore vary from one company to another, affecting how comparable the data is.
Other situations also require clarification. These include train services affected by prolonged line closures due to external causes, partially cancelled trains, and trains that are cancelled and subsequently rescheduled.
To better understand existing practices, UIC, together with experts involved in its statistics activities, will collect more detailed information on how train cancellation rates are calculated for the different services, taking into account practices used by the companies responsible for traffic management.
Staff statistics, productivity, and outsourcing
The second topic concerned staff statistics and the impact of outsourcing on productivity indicators. For example, some infrastructure managers (IM) outsource all infrastructure maintenance activities and therefore only report staff directly involved in traffic management. This can introduce significant bias into productivity indicators such as the number of employees per line-km or per train-km.
The committee therefore decided to focus on more specific indicators that should, in principle, be less affected by outsourcing. These include:
- Traffic management staff (full time equivalent (FTE))/train-km (variables 3104/1204)
- Number of train drivers (FTE)/train-km (variables 3106/4104)
- Total staff for transport operations (FTE)/train-km (variables 3105/4104)
These indicators will be included in the next Railway Statistical Indicators report.
Improving Railisa data quality
Finally, Italian State Railways (FSI) presented a methodology for detecting and tracking data anomalies, with the aim of improving the quality of data in Railisa.
Upcoming meetings
The next Statistics Platform Plenary meeting will take place on 19 November 2026 at UIC headquarters in Paris. The next Statistics Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for 3-4 May 2027 in Florence, hosted by FSI.
More information about the meetings is available on the UIC Extranet.
UIC members are invited to continue submitting their data through the online tool: http://stats.uic.org/.
To access and download UIC railway statistics, visit Railisa: http://uic-stats.uic.org/.
