On 9 April 2014 a meeting of the Commuter and Regional Train Services Working Group was held at PKP SA headquarters in Warsaw. The meeting was hosted by Agnieszka Gajewska, Director of the Strategy and International Cooperation Office at PKP SA and Bartłomiej Buczek, Chairman of the Group, Director of Transportation and a Board Member at PKP SKM in Tricity Ltd., a company part of the PKP Group.
The meeting was also attended by representatives of UIC: Marc Guigon (UIC), Kwon Ki Dong (UIC), Luis Casado (UIC), Takumi Ishii (UIC), and representatives of railway undertakings: Maria Magdelana Alonso (RENFE), Hans Bernhard Fiechter (BLS), Isabella Całkiewicz (PKP SA) and Michał Szarmach (PKP SKM).

Four presentations were shown during the meeting, illustrating operations of regional and agglomeration railways in Spain (Maria Magdalena Alonso), South Korea (Kwon Ki Dong), Japan (Takumi Ishii) and Poland (Bartłomiej Buczek, Michał Szarmach).

There was also discussion about the creation of a practical handbook for PSO, which aims to facilitate interaction between transport authorities and railway companies in the field of contractual practices. The preliminary draft is to be presented at the next meeting of the Group. This handbook is based on benchmarking of best practices, with legal and practical issues. This kind of handbook does not exist and the participants stated that it would be very useful, particularly in a context of liberalisation.

Moreover, the Group debated, inter alia, the issue of certain members developing reports that would describe, in an accessible and complex way, models of regional and agglomeration railways in particular countries as well as issues of regional cross-border train traffic. The aforementioned reports are supposed to provide a basis for a larger study on that matter.

The next meeting of the CRTS group will be held in Madrid on 5 June 2014.

This group is open to all UIC members, so do not hesitate to contact us should you wish to participate.