With a view to strengthening the Railway Undertakings’ message in the European Corridor structures as defined by Regulation 913/2010, UIC has initiated a project designed to streamline processes across all railway undertakings and across all corridors.
Concretely the project will:

• provide the necessary coordination and exchange of information between the advisory boards which will ensure Railway Undertakings’ needs are promoted efficiently
• set up a structure to monitor progress and designed to provide regular feedback which will help put in place the necessary improvement measures whenever required.

With the coming into force of the European regulation 913/2010 concerning a European rail network for competitive freight, corridors are being established at their own pace with no obligation of coordination between them.
According to the regulation, Railway Undertakings only play a consultative role in activities to improve the corridors, within corridor-specific “advisory boards” as illustrated in the graph below.

In their consultative capacity, European railway freight operators wish to underline that, while each corridor may require specific action to improve its own freight operations, a coordinated approach to corridor improvements should be pursued across Europe. Indeed, rail freight undertakings typically operate on more than one corridor. It is therefore important that operational and administrative rules are as consistent as possible across all corridors in order to promote rather than impede interoperability.
The European rail freight undertakings have therefore developed a number of “Uniform Requirements” towards infrastructure managers to take into account the paramount need to enhance interoperability and seamlessness.

A coordinated railway approach is becoming even more pressing as the transport market studies of some of the corridors are already being published. The results of these studies are in fact expected to be translated in the corridor implementation plans and, in particular, in the corridor investment plans.

With the coordinated approach proposed by the UIC Project, the Railways want to ensure efficient cooperation with Infrastructure Managers on all corridors and achieve further modal shift towards rail.

As Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, UIC Director General said

This project ties in with UIC’s mission to develop a pragmatic vision of technical and administrative interoperability between stakeholders".

A dedicated Railway meeting will be held on 13 May at UIC in Paris to continue progress in this direction.