The 8th UIC Asian Regional Assembly and the 1st World Highspeed Interaction Workshop were held in Daejeon, Korea, between 17 and 20 November at KORAIL HQ.

UIC members showed a strong willingness to increase their participation in UIC works and projects. Indeed, members finally expressed their interest in participating in more projects that originally planned.
The Delhi office work was also well appreciated. The perspective of having new members from CIS and the possible appointment of a local correspondent were warmly welcome too.
These two elements are part of a set of measures taken to improve relations between UIC HQ and the different regions.
For Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, Director General of UIC, this gives positive results and a constructive perception of this Asian Regional Assembly, preparing the works of 2010 in a very dynamic region, with a large number of diversified members.

The 1st World High Speed Interaction Workshop was also held in Daejeon, Korea, as part of the three actions launched by the UIC High Speed Division headed by Ignacio Barron (the 3 actions are: leaflets and documents, organisation of conferences, workshops).
Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, who participated to the workshop wonderfully organised by KORAIL, appreciated the relevance and the perception of the issue by the members.
12 countries were represented, and nearly 35 speakers made great presentations on high speed, allowing more than 200 participants to exchange best practices and their visions on the development of high speed on a global level. The presence of the Korean Vice-Minister of Transport and the President of KORAIL illustrated well to which extent the work of UIC in this sector answers strong expectations.
“I’m convinced that with high speed congress and workshops with this level of quality, both held every two years at the international scale, along with training sessions organised in Paris, in North America and soon in other capitals in the world, high speed will soon become one of the main topics of the global development of UIC” said Mr Loubinoux.

More information in the next UIC e-News.