Following a successful training session in October 2022, the Asia-Pacific members had another face-to-face meeting in Seoul. The 1st training session of 2023, hosted by KORAIL within the framework of IRaTCA (International Training Center for UIC Asia-Pacific), took place for five days from 17 to 21 April under the theme of “Railway Safety with Smart Technology”.
14 participants from Australia (ACRI and DOT Victoria), Azerbaijan (ADY), Georgia (GR), India (IR), Japan (JR-East), Kazakhstan (KTZ), Korea (KORAIL), Malaysia (KTMB), Mongolia (UBTZ) and Vietnam (VNR) attended the session with 2 experts from UIC and France (SNCF) present to share their experiences outside of the Asia-Pacific region. All of the participants discussed UIC’s operation & safety activities and KORAIL’s accomplishments in the domain safety.
Vincent Vu, Coordinator of the UIC Asia-Pacific region, began the session by introducing the collaborative activities in the region, with Cho Hokwon, Director of the Department of International Cooperation at KORAIL, explaining its main missions for railway safety.
Frédéric Hénon, Head of Operations & Safety at UIC, and Guillaume Foeillet, Railway Safety Project Manager at SNCF, gave a presentation on the European Railway Regulatory Framework for Interoperability & Safety, and on the UIC Operation & Safety activities. They shared what the good practices from the UIC safety working groups, Shift2Rail and Europe’s Rail were, as well as developments regarding the Future Railway Operation & Traffic Control Centre and 5G for rail. Lastly, they also presented the National Investigating Body’s (NIB) responsibilities and the Twinning II Project for improving safety culture.
KORAIL shared its practices with smart technology, including drone & 3D modelling-based automatic inspection systems for hard-to-access infrastructure, and DAC-based (Digital Automatic Coupler) remote shunting systems to control freight trains automatically. The railway accident analysis process, railway safety systems and investment policies for railway safety were also discussed, with the participants actively engaging with the speakers to find out how to upgrade their levels of railway safety.
All of the participants briefly presented their own current situation in terms of railway safety and best practices, which offered an opportunity to understand differences among the members and to find further activities for the near future.
The attendees then visited the KTX (Korean high-speed train) maintenance depot, the CTC (Central Traffic Control) centre and the Seoul train station to experience the extent of KORAIL’s efforts in ensuring safety. They were impressed with KORAIL’s systematic safety management in each area of the railway service.
Ko Joonyoung, Acting CEO & President of KORAIL, said “Safety on the railway is the best customer service which can be offered and forms the core value of railway transport. I hope that this UIC-KORAIL training session will enable our Asia-Pacific members to take another step forward in railway safety. KORAIL is also going to continue to strengthen its close relationship with UIC, for the further development of railways in the Asia-Pacific region”.
It is all the more important that participation in the 2023 session was bigger than in 2022. However, this was the first physical international event in the Asia-Pacific region since the pandemic in 2020. It shows that cooperation within the Asia-Pacific region is recovering and that the UIC-KORAIL sessions are a key opportunity to allow the regional members to restart their successful work together.
KORAIL is also going to host the 2nd UIC-KORAIL Training Session 2023 for the Asia-Pacific members in Seoul, which will focus on “Railway Passenger Service based on IT” on 4-8 September 2023. More details can be found at https://uic.org/events/uic-korail-training-session-2023.
