Webinar Xborder Workshop

23 February 2021

The current 75% market share for road transport is no longer sustainable due to its significant environmental impact. The projected transport growth of 30% by 2030, meaning 1 million additional trucks, will make it even worse.

The European Green deal acknowledges rail as the future backbone of our European transport system.

A fluent transport throughout Europe will be needed. For rail this is still an issue. Crossing borders is still hindered by a lot of legal and operational problems. Load regulations are not aligned between countries. On the legal side train drivers require a B1 language proficiency level. A train driver requires a multitude of licences to cross Europe. A DB cargo study calculated an astonishing difference of 15,000 documents needed for a train versus 1600 for a truck.

The RailFreightForward translated its ambition to increase the share of rail in freight to 30% by 2030 into priority topics like the cross-border project. The project focusses on Language issues on the one hand and cross-border operations on the other hand.

A project team consisting of experts developed a handbook for ideal cross-border operations from a railway undertakings perspective. On February 23rd a webinar is organised to present their findings. After presentations from the project sponsor and a testimonial from the European Union Agency for Railways more details on commercial, legal and technical aspects at cross borders sections will be developed.

Programme

9:00 – 9:10 Welcome
Sandra Géhénot (UIC), Philip den bosch (UIC)

9:10 – 9:20 International Rail freight flows and cross-border Challenges
Dérisée Baer (SBBc)

9:20 – 9:30 Interoperability from a European perspective
Karen Davies (ERA), Mathieu Schittekatte (ERA)

9:30 – 10:15 Presenting the handbook on ideal Cross border sections from an RU perspective
9:30 – 9:45 Technical aspects
Steffen Weigelt (DB Cargo)
9:45 – 10:00 Legal aspects
Götz Walther (VDV)
10:00 – 10:15 Commercial aspects
Constantin Woronoff (Lineas)

10:15 – 11:00 Application of proposals to demonstrator sections
10:15 – 10:30 The Forbach case
Alain Voltz (Fret SNCF)
10:30 – 10:45 The Szczecin case
Götz Walther (VDV)
10:45 – 11:00 The Tarvisio case
Andrea Penso (DB Cargo)

11:00 – 11:15 Conclusions and next steps
All