An official UIC visit to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile was held in the first week of September, within the framework of its activities in the Latin American Region. The UIC participants were François Davenne, UIC Director General, Marc Guigon, Passenger Director and Latin American Region coordinator, and Vanessa Pérez Miranda, Senior Advisor for the Passenger Department and for the Latin American Regional Assembly.. José Villafañe, President of ALAF and of the UIC Latin American Region, Joubert Flores, and Vice-President of the UIC Latin American Region also collaborated on this mission.
The decision to launch these missions came in a bilateral meeting with UIC Chairman Mamiński and Director General Davenne at the beginning of this year, where Villafañe and Flores highlighted how the region has great potential, the need to emphasise the benefits of working with UIC and their commitment to increasing railway and national cooperation with UIC at an international level. Consequently the first mission was organised to visit Ecuador and Columbia, and then the second going to Brazil, Argentina and Chile, taking place with Davenne’s participation.
During this second mission the UIC representatives had the opportunity to meet with high level representatives from the Argentinian, Brazilian, Chilian, Guatemalan, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Bolivian national administrations and discuss UIC’s activities. In Brazil, UIC also met representatives from the Development Bank of Brazil, the CCR Group, the São Paulo Metropolitan Train Company (CPTM) and the Secretary of Transport of São Paulo.
A one-day programme organised at the Head Quarters of the Latin American Association of Railways (ALAF) in Buenos Aires, saw the participation of multiple RUs such as the Argentinian Railways, FASE, DECAPH, ADIFSE, SOFSE Belgrano Cargas, and JST, to name just a few, as well as universities and representatives of neighbouring countries such as Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay being in attendance.
In Chili, UIC had the opportunity to meet the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications as well as the President and the Director of Strategy from the main railway undertaking in the country, EFE.
This mission is part of the UIC LARA Region’s action plan to create a Vision 2050 to foster railway growth in Latin America, bringing the systems up to international standards and spreading knowledge. These are the main ways in which UIC and its international network of experts could support an increase in railway projects in the region.
The LARA region is running multiple UIC backed activities, such as the 17 May 2022 webinar entitled “5G - New Technologies Applied to Railway Systems” led by UIC’s Head of Telecom, Signalling & Digital Applications, Jean-Michel Evanghelou. The webinar was held entirely in Spanish and attracted considerable interest, with around 150 people registering to attend online from different parts of Latin America. The video recording of the session can be accessed via the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCJ0ORRBrYc&t=4874s. Other topics, such as safety, which will be discussed in the following months will also be uploaded.
To find out more about the UIC Latin American Region, please visit the dedicated website at https://uic.org/latin-america/
