On 28 and 29 April 2014 the meeting of the Intercity and High Speed Committee took place at UIC Headquarters in Paris. These half yearly gatherings are a forum for all UIC members active in the field of high speed.
The committee was chaired by Mr Michel Leboeuf.
UIC was represented by the Director of the Passenger Department, Mr Ignacio Barrón, Mr Takumi Ishii, Senior Advisor High Speed, Mr Marc Guigon, Senior Advisor Passenger Transport, Mr Ki-Dong Kwon, Senior Advisor and Mr Sighoon Choi, Senior Advisor.
20 other persons representing railway undertakings, infrastructure managers, policy makers, consultants and research institutes, participated in the meeting.
The committee went through the different topics concerning intercity trains and high speed:
- Presentation of UIC high speed data bases: lines, rolling stock.
- Presentation of the project for a world atlas of high speed around the world.
- Presentation of the results of a study to calculate the number of high speed trains running on dedicated lines based on the MERITS timetable data.
- Presentation of the high speed activities report: conferences, workshops, training, cooperation.
- Presentation of the study on high speed under extreme natural conditions.
- Presentation of high speed projects in Romania.
Some other presentations were discussed during the meeting on high speed and the city, operations in high speed stations, track for high speed: ballasted versus unballasted tracks, security handbook, investigation on ticket prices, driving cabs design.
A call on Universities for research into the management of High Speed Networks will be launched to compare High Speed networks to other utilities (electricity, water…). The results will be presented during the next congress in Tokyo.
Cooperation with the SMGG (Station Manager Global Group) was proposed for some topics: Observatory on stations, leaflet 413 on signage, data bases on stations.
Organisational plans for the next worldwide congress on high speed to be held in Tokyo in July 2015 were also presented.
The next UIC Intercity and High Speed Committee will take place in the Basque region of Spain on 3-4 November 2014.
