ERRAC – the European Rail Research Advisory Council – is more active than ever! While in December 2009, ERRAC gave the European Commission its advice on the priority topics for European rail research, this week it published the first issue of its new ERRAC Newsletter as well as a totally updated ERRAC Website (www.errac.org) which was developed by the UIC Communications department.

The Newsletter contains – beside an introduction by ERRAC’s chairman Andrew McNaughton – an interview with ERRAC ROADMAP WP03 leader Yves Amsler of the UITP as well as news on the activities of most of the ROADMAP projects Work Packages and upcoming Workshops. It concludes with important dates for the future WP workshops, the ERRAC Plenary and of course the WCRR 2011 in Lille. ERRAC produces an annual rail research roadmap which heavily influences the agenda for the future rail research. The draft 2010 roadmaps are the focus of discussion in the planned workshops. Your participation an input is highly valued!

New look for the ERRAC website

ERRAC has recently launched its new-look website The new website includes general information on ERRAC and all important and influential documents produced since the project began in 2001. These include the Joint Strategy for European Rail Research – Vision 2020; the SRRA (Strategic Rail Research Agenda) and its 2007 updated version; and a special section dedicated to the “ERRAC Roadmap Project”, the three-year rail research road mapping project.

In "ERRAC News "information on the dates, venues and reports of the Roadmap Open Workshops and the latest published documents, such as the ERRAC Newsletter, are available. The new ERRAC website also includes a lot of useful functionalities, such as a search engine, an automatic RSS feed, a site map, an automatic pictures slideshow, a spam filter and email protection.