On 16 May, the High Level Freight Meeting, organised by the Community of European Railways (CER) and the International Union of Railways (UIC), took place in Paris. Around 30 CEOs of the freight industry gathered at UIC headquarters to discuss and jointly implement the measures developed by the CEO Task Force, which are reflected in a total of nine projects. The aim is to influence the issues surrounding rail freight transport at the political level throughout Europe.
In addition to Clemens Först, CER Executive Director Libor Lochman and UIC Director General Jean-Pierre Loubinoux welcomed the participants and gave an overview of the rail freight market. It became clear that European land transport is an important economic sector with an enormous impact on the environment and society. Transport volumes are expected to increase by 30% by 2030, but with a high affinity to road transport. The vision is therefore to massively accelerate rail freight transport and make it the backbone of the European transport system. At the end of 2018, for example, a number of communication activities were launched as part of the Rail Freight Forward initiative, including the climate ambassador Noah's Train.
A work programme has now been developed by the CEO Task Force and nine specific projects have been identified. In addition, three further proposals for the implementation of digital projects were made. All partner companies must make resources available to the Rail Freight Forward Coalition. All projects contribute to the three strategic goals of the RFF white paper.
Nine projects, three goals:
- “Rail operators to offer superior innovative products”
- Cross-Border Language
- Cross-Border Sections
- Braking & Train Composition
- “Infrastructure to support customer focus”
- Temporary Capacity Restriction
- TimeTable Redesign (TTR)
- Fair Capacity Allocation
- “Authorities to guarantee level playing field”
- Eurovignette
- Funding & Financing
- Combined Transport
