On 26 November, 13 representatives of 10 member railway companies including China railways and Russian railways attended the biannual meeting of the Statistics Steering Committee (SSC, see the list of participants below). Discussions mainly focused on financial and performance indicators. Critical issues were addressed such as employee’s performance measurement and the effect of outsourcing inducing an overstatement of labour productivity or else, the influence of rolling stock ownership (vs both operative and financial leasing) in operational performance indicators, for instance. Otherwise, concerning data collection it was proposed to recast five-yearly data especially on the type and age of wagons, passenger and tractive vehicles. The main argument being that such an inventory is heavy to establish especially for companies with multiple subsidiaries in different countries as well as outsourcing of freight rolling stock. The proposal was approved by the SSC and a reshaped questionnaire is being developed. Finally, new functionalities in online tools for data collection and dissemination (i.e. Railisa application) are planned to be implemented in order to improve automatic data exchange.
The next SSC meeting will be hosted by DB-AG in Berlin from 19 – 20 May 2020.
On 27 November, the first session of the plenary meeting started by a welcome speech addressed by Roman Sterba (SZDC, Czech Republic) Chairman of the Statistics group. Then, Vincent Vu, Director of Institutional Relations briefly presented the UIC organisational structure, its departments and services and next the position of the statistics group in the organisational map, its role and missions as well as ongoing projects.
Internal activities of the statistics group were then reported by UIC: 1- response rate of members to individual data collection, 2- changes within some questionnaires together with relevant changes of variable definitions made this year by the Steering Committee, 3- indicators, timeseries, maps based on collected data, and 4- Railisa project’s progress.
Content updates of leaflet 390-1 R on rail statistical and costs terminology and its migration to RailLexic were presented by Stefan Weigel (SBB, Switzerland), member of the steering committee, followed by a presentation of the UIC High Speed Rail statistics given by Kenzo Fujita from the UIC Passenger department.
During the second session, Mr Andrey Schelkanov presented comprehensive Corporate Data Management System and visualisation of data and indicators by means of Business Intelligence tool of RZD (Russia) and next Mr Tartaglia, member of the Steering Committee, showed the innovated Strategic Information Management System of FSI (Italy).
A representative of Eurostat, ITF-OECD, UNECE and OSJD then used the opportunity for mutual information and they took floor with presentations on rail transport statistics from their respective state members.
The plenary meeting of the Statistics Group approved the programme of activities, surveys and reports, the meetings of the Steering Committee and key projects for the year 2020.
The day concluded with a workshop on how to use UIC online applications for data collection, visualisation and dissemination and the documentary sharing on the Statistics workspace of the UIC extranet.
On 28 November, SNCF Mobilités organised the technical visit of the luxury coaches from the former Orient Express train located at the technical centre of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, near Paris. This luxury furnished train created by the ‘Compagnie des Wagons Lits’ (CIWL) is the symbol of art travel. Its first journey was launched in October 1883 from Paris. It is one of France’s rail heritage jewels. Its last trip from Paris to Istanbul was in May 1977, 94 years after its first launch. Today, seven coaches are SNCF property and some of them are listed as historical monuments. These coaches were totally restored some years ago with Lalique wall glass creations and Rene Prou’s furniture. Several cars were visited: pullman, bar and restaurant cars. For passenger comfort its speed is limited at 120 km/h even if it could run at 160 km/h. This unique train runs for exceptional events and private trips.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the participants of the SSC meeting: Mr Francisco Contreras (ADIF, Spain), Mrs Ileana Iacob and Mr Adrian Grozavescu (CFR-SA, Romania), Mr Xia Baohe (CR, China), Mr Gerd Hoppe (DB-AG, Germany), Mr Mario Tartaglia and Mr Michele Cerullo (FS, Italy), Mr Adam Smyczynski (PKP, Poland), Mrs Natalia Ignatieva and Mr Andrey Schelkanov (RZD, Russia), Mr Stefan Weigel (SBB, Switzerland), Mr Eric Dutrieux (SNCF MOBILITES, France) and Mr Roman Sterba (Chairman, SZDC, Czech Republic).
