“We hope to have a draft law from the European Commission on the Technological Initiative SHIFT2RAIL by the end of the year, the joint technological initiative which promotes the modal shift to railway, now, when the market share of railway transport is falling and has to recover”, declared Philippe Citroen, Director General UNIFE, during the Railway Days Summit – “Greener and more efficient railways in WBSA”, organised by Club Feroviar and the Romanian Railway Industry Association (AIF) on 8-9 October in Bucharest.
The budget of this project in ensured through the FP7, program initiated by the European Commission.
UNIFE’s Director General pointed out the five research pillars that the SHIFT2RAIL initiative will focus on. Thus, the pillars refer to energy systems and technological solutions developed for large capacity trains, control and signalling systems, cost-efficiency, development of IT solutions for a seamless transport and development of technologies for a sustainable and attractive European freight transport.
SHIFT2RAIL will develop and implement a new way of addressing the challenges for innovation in railway technology. Two key objectives have been identified by the initiative, the first one is increasing capacity so as to enable rail to absorb a greater share of traffic growth and the second is to attract business and improve the efficiency of the rail transportation mode as a whole.
The initiative will contribute to an increase in the overall efficiency of the rail transport system, satisfy transport user’s needs, and at the same time help foster the competitiveness of the European manufacturing industry, through the implementation of technological innovation.
A dedicated overall budget is estimated at around EUR 1 Billion over a six to seven year period.
The creation of a new rail Joint Techno-logy Initiative, SHIFT2RAIL, will allow addressing – through technology innovation – a significant part of the future transport societal challenges. This will allow for a major industrial effort, involving virtually all of Europe’s rail industry suppliers, including innovative small and medium enterprises to accelerate the development of new technologies and bring them to the market.
The initiative, supported by railway pro-duct suppliers, transport operators and railway institutions will overcome some of the present deficiencies of the EU rail market, namely: fragmentation of production, low collaboration and partnership among the rail industry, different operating procedures among railway undertakings, low standardization, and low efficiency.
Philippe Citroen also talked about the unpleasant situation of the poor rate of absorption of European non-reimbursable funds by most countries in South Europe and stressed, once more, the availability of UNIFE and of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) to provide information support to associations and member companies so as to facilitate the absorption of European funds. UNIFE believes that the low absorption rate of the European funds is caused by an improper administrative capacity and the lack of political will.
Also, UNIFE’s Director General pointed out the fact that the new member states seemed to prefer to finance more road infrastructure projects than railway or other sustainable transport modes.
Share on:
