Latest News

March 30, 2021

Streamed live from Lisbon on the eve of the ministerial informal Council meeting dedicated to rail, the European Year of Rail 2021’s official kick-off took place on 29 March, jointly organised by the European Commission and the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union.   During the opening session, Portugal’s Minister for Infrastructure and Housing Pedro Nuno Santos, highlighted the importance of rail for passengers and businesses. This was followed by European Commissioner…

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February 25, 2021

Predefined messages that enable the driver and the traffic controller to communicate despite language barriers Download here Description: Translate4Rail offers drivers a comprehensive set of predefined standardised messages (PDMs) to exchange with an infrastructure manager traffic controller (signaller) in normal or exceptional operational situations in a country where they do not understand nor speak the local language. Besides the list of agreed PDMs a digital tool using these messages will be implemented to enable the…

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February 23, 2021

Europe’s Rail partnership, the successor to the current Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking, has been officially announced today by the European Commission as part of a proposal for the set-up of 10 new European Partnerships under the Horizon Europe programme. All the partnerships share the objective of achieving a climate neutral and digital Europe. Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking will build on the successful results of Shift2Rail’s work with its members and partners to speed up the development…

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January 28, 2021

Digital Automatic Coupling (DAC) is set to transform European rail freight. It will indeed benefit the entire rail freight sector, including operators, infrastructure managers, and manufacturers. Thanks to DAC, network capacity will be increased, train formation will require less shunting, manual processes will be reduced while predictive maintenance will be enabled. To achieve all this, a single European-wide system incorporating broad sector agreement and the alignment of all ongoing and planned European DAC initiatives is…

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January 28, 2021

Rail as benefit for EU society Download here Description: This output illustrates the rail ecosystem strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: It brings us closer by collecting case studies and success stories that provide a model to be replicated, fostering continuous learning from positive experiences. More information on this topic: Click here for the Ter4Rail project website  Rail Innovative Research Observatory DOWNLOAD HERE Description: This output…

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January 28, 2021

Shift2Rail’s project PLASA-2 held its final conference on 12 January 2021. The virtual event was organised in 2 sessions – the morning session focused on CCA Work Area Smart Planning and the afternoon session on Virtual Certification. Both sessions attracted more than 50 participants, connected from 11 different countries and representing 25 companies.   The morning session presented the PROTON simulation tool which was developed under Shift2Rail’s Work Area investigating Smart Planning. It allows to…

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