The Organisation Committee (OC) of the 11th UIC ERTMS World Conference met on 22 January 2013 at UIC Paris Headquarters. The 11th UIC ERTMS World Conference is going to be held in Istanbul, Turkey, at the invitation of Turkish State Railways (TCDD) and their President and Director General Süleyman Karaman, who is also Chairman of the UIC Middle-East Region as well as member of the UIC European Region. The conference will be held on a date in spring that will be confirmed within the next few days.
The Organisation Committee is chaired by Hans Günther Kersten, Director of the UIC Rail System Department, with the support of Paul Véron, Director of Communications at UIC. The Organising Committee includes representatives of UNIFE – in particular several ERTMS suppliers, ERTMS Users’ Group, and GSM-R Industry group. The Host Railway TCDD is represented by Ibrahim Cevik, Head of International Affairs of Turkish Railways, Müzeyyen Sönmez and Ferhat Demirkiran from the TCDD International Department, Alper Cebici from the TCDD High Speed Construction Division and Gökhan Olmez from CMS Project, Turkey.
This 11th UIC ERTMS World Conference in Istanbul is to be combined with an Introductory Seminar to ERTMS, a day prior to the conference opening, and followed by a new edition of the Traffic Management and Control Command System (TMCCS) workshop, the first of which had been successfully organised in Istanbul in 2008. The UIC ERTMS conference has become a worldwide reference for all players involved in the implementation of ERTMS, ETCS and GSM-R across the world. The last edition attracted around 700 participants to Stockholm in 2012.
The official logo of the 11th UIC ERTMS World Conference prepared by CMS Project was unanimously approved by all OC Members.
Lively debates took place in order to finalise the conference theme, sub-themes and focuses, the provisional conference programme as well as the overall structure of the event (combination of conference sessions, trade exhibition and technical visits proposed by TCDD, etc.).
A Save the Date with a general description of this ERTMS World Conference will be sent out within the next few weeks.
