Rail Freight Corridor NL - CZ final version - International ...

Rail Freight Corridor NL - CZ
constraints on railways together with the challenge of globalisation of the transport market,
which creates new opportunities for railways.
The UIC mission in 2006 consists in promoting Rail transport at World level in order to meet
challenges of Mobility and Sustainable Development.
UIC´s key tasks are: technical cooperation, rail system coherence, interoperability. There are
many projects under way in UIC, with respect to the topic of this study only those projects are
mentioned, which pertain to freight and combined transport:
DIOMIS (Developing infrastructure and operating models) – the project aims to increase
productivity in freight and combined transport. It means:
Encouraging new types of cooperation between all stakeholders in combined transport (CT):
terminal operators, CT operators, shippers, railway undertakings, infrastructure managers,
national and European authorities;
• Describing and helping to implement optimal capacity management models at terminal level
in order to use the available capacity in an optimal manner
• Describing the benefits of an international approach towards planning and production, and
lay down the basic principles for a common approach towards improvement of intermodal
services;
• Learning to grow Rail Freight traffics on a saturated railway infrastructure
Standard of loading Rules - Draft European Norm defining a basis for loading safety in rail
freight transport. Objective is to create a uniform European basis for the protection of freight
goods on rail vehicles, with the aim of ensuring a common safety standard. To achieve
unlimited interoperability by defining such a standard.
Euro SIWAL (European Single Wagon Load Project) – Single Wagon Load is for most members
of UIC a large but unprofitable business segment. While being currently not competitive with
road, international SIWAL appears to have market potential and aim is to make use of it.
Intramodal competition appears to be unlikely because of high costs for duplicating the
production system of home players. UIC tries to initiate the emergence of a European Single
Wagon Load System. The project will be supported by individual members (currently
Stinnes/Railion) and by external consultants.
TEMA (Terminal Management) – The project contributes to the development of the intermodal
freight transport and will help to set up a benchmark for best practices in the access, the
allocation and the cost of freight terminals. As independent studies forecast an expansion of the
combined traffic on the most European freight corridors in the next years, it is necessary to
improve the knowledge of the quality of freight terminals (access rules, capacity availability and
cost. The project aims at analysing and defining an optimised management model for railways /
intermodal freight terminals with special reference to linkages to major harbours. UIC intends to
disseminate information on access to terminals and to report on best practices as well. The
project is of particular interest along the main European corridors, with special linkages to
harbours.
The former RIV (Regolamento Internazionale Veicoli) – the General Contract of Use for Wagons
(GCU) provides to railways and wagon keepers a multilateral contractual framework based on
the Uniform Rules CUV for the use of the wagons of all wagon keepers in international freight
traffic. It contains all relevant mutual rights and obligations of railway undertakings and wagon
keepers regarding the use of wagons taking into account and balancing the different interests of
36 Final report
R20080142