ERRAC Roadmap WP02 Workshops: Freight and Passenger Transport
The objective of the ERRAC ROADMAP EU funded project is to deliver a roadmap for the Rail Research priorities needed to reach the objective of the Vision 2020 (and beyond) of an integrated European railway system and to advise the European Commission on the basis of this Roadmap on the content of it’s Framework Program for Research and Call for Proposals.
WP02, one of the 5 strategic Work Packages of the project, is focussed on long distance Rail Transport and is producing a Roadmap for Passenger Transport as well as for Freight Transport.
On 25 February the WP02 team, ably led by Bo Olsson of Banverket presented its first draft Rail Freight Roadmap during an open interactive workshop in Brussels. The purpose of the workshop was to discuss a Roadmap for Freight Research with the aim of identifying and prioritising topics that would help in achieving a modal shift of goods in favour of rail. After several interesting presentations, the contents of the draft Roadmap were discussed. During a final plenary session, the results of the discussions were presented. During the weeks following the workshop the new elements were integrated in the draft. A next step is to reach additional important parties not present during the workshop and to invite their reactions to the updated document through a number of differentiated questionnaires, aimed at each of the target groups – different players in the transport chain - such as infrastructure managers, railway undertakings, shippers and intermodal operators. Currently the ERRAC Core Freight Core Group team is conducting face to face or telephone interviews with stakeholders who were not able to attend the workshop.
A similar WP02 workshop dealing with Long Distance Passenger Rail Transport was held 3 March in Brussels with the same aim of identifying and prioritising challenges that needs to be overcome in order to get more people to choose the train over other transport modes. Following this workshop, the same approach is being followed, using questionnaires and telephone interviews to add elements to the draft Roadmap.
Present at the workshops were people from the “business”, user group, academia and the European Commission.
ERRAC Evaluation Working Group WP06 Workshop was held in Brussels on 18 March 2010 at the Royal Academy.
The overall scope of the WP6 Evaluation Working Group, within the ERRAC ROADMAP Project, is to bring forward and enhance the work done in providing essential information and tools on lessons learnt from the evaluation of past projects, to allow relevant rail related stakeholders and roadmap producers to make better choices and decisions, to achieve a more effective and measureable success of future rail research projects, both in terms of a systemic-oriented use of resources and in terms of concrete outcomes and real market uptake, for the future evolution of the rail industry.
During the past years, a great number of rail research projects have been funded by the European Commission in previous Framework Programmes, and billions of euros have been spent to this end. Yet it has not been easy to gain full awareness of all the relevant research that has been carried out. Valuable research results are often lost and the risk of overlappings and/or of generating redundant rail project initiatives is significant.
A good process of thinking in advance, based on lessons learnt from other projects, can lead to a much better focus that can guarantee concrete market uptake, for the future rail industry and market in general.
Please find below all the presentations which were given at the workshop organised by the Evaluation Working Group of the ERRAC ROADMAP project (WP06) on 18 March 2010 in Brussels at the Royal Academy. It has been a time to gain insight on lessons learnt from project evaluations and share opinions and contributions to the discussion on more efficient use of resources for the way forward.
ERRAC Roadmap WP05 Workshop: Railway competitiveness, costs and priorities for innovation
John Amoore and ERRAC WP05 would like to invite you to the Open Workshop
“Whole Railway Cost Models and Drivers for Innovation and Competition”
on 22nd April 2010 at CER in Brussels, 53 Avenue des Arts B-1000 Brussels - Belgium
The main focus of this workshop will be to develop the high level railway cost structures against European railway cost data and from this develop further research needs and further develop the ideas from the first open workshop held in London at the end of last year.
You can find the agenda and the notes from the last workshop in London (this includes the charts of the top down breakdown of UK rail costs) on the ERRAC website. In the workshop on 22 April 2010, we intend to build up a model of railway costs across Europe and use this as the basis for a top down approach to determine priorities for innovation.
The final (annual) ERRAC Roadmap 2010 will be presented during the ERRAC Plenary meeting on 18 May in Brussels and subsequently to the European Commission in June.
The Roadmaps will be updated on an annual basis as part of the ongoing ERRAC work.
