UIC Day was held at the headquarters of Kazakhstan Railways (JSC NC KTZ) to promote the UIC and UIC Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly (APRA) Vision 2050, headed by Vincent Vu, Director of Institutional Relations and Coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Region.
Up to 30 staff from JSC NC KTZ were expected to participate, led by its chief engineer, directors, specialists and representatives of the different activities.
The role of JSC NC KTZ in UIC Asia-Pacific and the implementation of the core competencies of UIC towards its members and towards the external regional partners were discussed during the meeting.
The UIC team presented the UIC Asia-Pacific needs at the regional and sub-regional levels, the UIC Asia-Pacific position and actions with international organisations and intergovernmental agencies, with national authorities and governments and with the railway manufacturing industry. UIC also identified the Action Plan, which is supposed to select, promote and guide specific projects.
Mr Bauyrzhan Urynbasarov, Chief Engineer of JSC NC KTZ, presented the latest developments of JSC NC KTZ, and stressed the importance of the diversified duties of its company under its ambitious motto: “Quality, Reliability and Stability”. Today JSC NC KTZ, a newly integrated company besides its railway activity, provides airport management, port and highways, with four ships, targeting 20 vessels in 2020. The company will create an airline cargo in 2017 and will become a multimodal freight operator that sees its freight traffic growing rapidly, particularly with regard to containers. JSC NC KTZ has also initiated strong actions regarding railway rolling stock: 350 locomotives, 36,000 wagons, 430 passenger coaches. The company builds and exports locomotives and wagons to other countries. He finally underlined that JSC NC KTZ has implemented 25 projects with UIC.
The ideal position of Kazakhstan, between Asia and Europe, gives the country a key role on the New Silk Road, with 1,700 km of track and 460 km of planned track to achieve this target.
The important programme of discussions between specialists was organised in plenary and parallel sessions:
Presentations of UIC APRA Vision 2050 and APRA projects for 2017-2018.
Presentation of JSC NC KTZ projects for APRA given by Mr Arystanbek Omarbekov, Director of the Scientific-Research Centre, especially on optimisation of wheel-rail profile design, rolling-stock coupling systems and cooperation in the domain of research and standardisation.
Presentation of KTZ subsidiary “Aktobe Rail”, rail track manufacturer, given by Mr Alimkhan Zhanbatorov.
Fundamental Values: Jacques Colliard, besides updating the Security issues he is in charge of, focused on the additional 2016 UIC Security Programme agreed upon by the General Assembly in December 2015. With regard to security work on “Border crossing – International Rail Corridors”, a discussion was held on whether to develop standards for electronic seals to protect freight transport between Asia and Europe. The corresponding project was submitted to the UIc Europe and Asia-Pacific Assemblies. This project was requested by JSC NC KTZ who is involved in all the work.
Nicholas Craven, dealing with Sustainable Development, responded to the Kazakh needs for the calculation of railway projects costs taking into account the CO² and GHG emission impacts as well as the current activities supporting the United Nations global initiatives and the UIC leaflets in that domain.
Passengers issues, by Messrs. Iñaki Barrón, Director, and Marc Guigon, Senior Advisor, included stations (security, sustainability, information, Next Station conference and working groups), regional train services, relations with transport authorities, distribution (the international database MERITS for train schedules on the different distribution systems in Europe), the tools for disabled passengers and the development for touristic trains. JSC NC KTZ is part of the Stations Management Global Group and has been invited to participate in the talks during the next Security Congress in Helsinki from 23 – 25 November.
All speakers proposed joint actions which will be included in the UIC-JSC NC KTZ Action Plan.
