RESTRAIL (see success story at:http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/news/no-trespassing-preventing-rail-accidents-and-suicides) is still active more than four years after the end of the project.
RESTRAIL (REduction of Suicides and Trespasses on RAILway property) was the first collaborative EU research project to foster international cooperation in an effort to reduce the number of railway suicides, trespasses and service disruptions (http://www.restrail.eu/). The project was coordinated by UIC’s Security division and implemented between 2011 and 2014 in collaboration with railway stakeholders, academia and research organisations and SMEs.
The interdisciplinary work resulted in a dynamic online toolbox (http://restrail.eu/toolbox/) which has become increasingly popular among railway stakeholders, decision-makers, safety experts and researchers.
Similar toolkit to prevent suicides in other modes of transport
In recent years, the RESTRAIL toolbox has also became a model for other preventative actions. In 2018, CRES (a French suicidology resource centre) began implementation of a toolkit for suicide prevention and postvention actions across all European transport sectors affected by this problem: https://toolboxpreventionsuicidetransport.wordpress.com/.
The CRES project aims to be complementary to RESTRAIL since it covers all modes of transport: road, rail, river, maritime and air. A mode of transport comprises the transport vehicle, transport infrastructure (e.g. airport, lock, airstrip, bridge, quay, rail, road) and the respective transport environment (e.g. river, maritime space, air space, etc.).
Since the project is based on existing RESTRAIL work, rail transport is not treated as a priority in the CRES toolkit and the RESTRAIL toolbox is referenced for this transport sector. As with the RESTRAIL toolbox, the CRES toolkit is intended to be easy to access and aims to bring together existing actions to serve as examples of good practice. The information is gradually imported into the toolkit as it is collected from public sources.
Steps forward in 2019: save the date for 25 and 26 March
At UIC members’ request, a UIC workshop will be organised on 25 March (14:00-18:00 CET) at UIC headquarters in Paris to revisit the topic of RESTRAIL and discuss ways of moving forward on the topic. The workshop will be followed the next day by the ELCF (European Level Crossing Forum) – a UIC working group involving a related topic and relevant experts. The organisation of these two events on consecutive days aims to optimise expert participation and to further stimulate synergies between safety and security-related topics.
A registration link will be made available shortly.
