RNE Business Conference 2011

Opening of the Conference

The Conference was opened at 10 am by the welcoming words of the RNE Vice-President Harald Hotz, who was delighted to greet more than 180 guests. Then the two conference moderators, Bettina Wunsch-Semmler, RNE Vice-President, and Joachim Kroll, Secretary General of RNE, introduced the conference programme to the participants.
After this introduction, the floor was handed over to the RNE Managing Board members and RNE specialists who informed the conference guests about recent RNE activities and gave a preview of future activities.

RNE Activities

- Communication & External Relations
The session was opened by Bettina Wunsch-Semmler (RNE Vice-President in charge of Communications & External Relations), who presented the latest activities in the field of Communications. She started with the new RNE corporate design, including new logos for RNE and its IT systems, which have been re-named in order to ensure greater consistency. PATHFINDER is now called Path Coordination System (PCS), EUROPTIRAILS has become the Train Information System (TIS) and EICIS is now known as the Charging Information System (CIS).
In the second part of her presentation, Ms Wunsch-Semmler introduced the new RNE website (www.rne.eu) and the new websites of RNE’s IT systems (pcs.rne.eu, tis.rne.eu, cis.rne.eu). Not only have all websites received a major makeover according to the same design, they also provide new functions and contents.
Ms Wunsch-Semmler went on to present the RNE Communication Network. This network of communication specialists (drawn from the RNE member organisations) shall help to improve the external and internal communications of RNE and/with its Members. 

- Corridor Management
Mr Boris Živec (RNE Vice-President in charge of Corridor Management) informed the audience about the new Freight Regulation (913/2010) of the European Union and its close relation to RNE’s work. He pointed out the new role of RailNetEurope as service provider of choice and expert support provider for developing methods and processes, as well as developing and operating (IT) tools. Moreover Mr Živec informed the audience about the allocation of tasks that has been agreed upon between RailNetEurope and the future Rail Freight Corridor Organisations. He ended his presentation by providing detailed information about the RNE Work Packages, which are designed to assist RNE and its Members with the implementation of Regulation 913/2010.

- Sales & Timetabling
Mr Harald Hotz (RNE Vice-President in charge of Sales & Timetabling) started his part of the RNE activities presentation with an overview of the tasks related to Sales & Timetabling required under the Freight Regulation. He then introduced the Corridor One-Stop-Shop (OSS) and three different concepts for this new function. Mr Hotz also mentioned the main challenges raised by this new function: the allocation of pre-arranged paths, the interaction with other RFCs/IMs/ABs and the information flow from the Corridor OSS to applicants.
Mr Hotz then turned to the concept of pre-arranged paths, which should fulfil requirements concerning capacity allocation to international freight trains on the corridors. He also discussed the future coordination/publication of works, which should fulfil requirements related to restricting available capacity on a corridor.
In the last part of his presentation, Mr Hotz talked about the RNE Path Coordination System (PCS, formerly PATHFINDER). After a brief introduction, he explained that this tool is ready to fulfil the requirements of the Freight Regulation. Mr Hotz then showed some system usage figures and told the audience that there had been an increase of 295 % in the number of dossiers handled by PCS in the last four years. He stressed that RNE’s ultimate aim was for PCS to handle all international path requests and path allocations.

- Operations & After Sales
Mr Michel Dupuis (RNE Vice-President in charge of Operations & After Sales) started his presentation by highlighting the main RNE activities in the field of operations and after sales. He mentioned some changes in the composition  owing to the participation of existing Freight Corridor Organisations. Then he informed the participants in more detail about three Work Packages: ‘Punctuality Targets‘, ‘Traffic Management‘ and ‘Priority Rules‘. Looking at next year, Mr Dupuis announced the integration of Train Performance Management and EPR, more involvement in TIS development and the further involvement of Corridor Organisations.
In the second part of the Operations & After Sales presentation, Ms  Simona Di Loreto (RNE Operations & After Sales Manager) gave an overview of the European Performance Regime (EPR). She explained that originally in 2005 it was a UIC project and had become a joint RNE-UIC project in 2009. She then outlined the main tasks of EPR in 2010 and informed the audience about the pilot application. Looking at 2012, Ms Di Loreto noted that the aim was to put in place an integrated system of quality improvement, in which EPR was one component, and to strengthen the involvement of Corridor Organisations.

- Network Statements & Legal Matters
Mr Miroslaw Kanclerz (RNE Vice-President in charge of Legal Matters and Network Statements) presented the concept of Corridor Statement. He started by outlining the current situation: several Network Statements for every Rail Corridor. In 2011, RNE had created a common structure for the Corridor Statements of Rail Freight Corridors that will provide corridor-wide information within one document – a specification for the Corridor Statement Common Structure had just been approved by RNE’s General Assembly.

- TAF TSI & Train Information System (TIS, formerly EUROPTIRAILS)
In the last part of the RNE activities presentation, Harald Reisinger, CIO of RailNetEurope, informed the audience about recent work in the field of TAF TSI and relating to the Train Information System (TIS). He described the TAF TSI timeline, with its most important steps in the past as well as in the future. One of these steps is the TAF/TAP Master Plan, which has to be delivered to the European Commission by 13 May 2012. Mr Reisinger then talked about the three implementation phases for TAF TSI:  Phase 1 IT Specifications, Phase 2 Development and Phase 3 Deployment (Pilot).
After this he presented the latest activities in the Train Information System (TIS), which was formerly known as EUROPTIRAILS. After introducing the system and showing the plan for its rollout across Europe, Mr Reisinger showed some impressing figures to the audience: TIS currently monitors more than 100 000 international trains per month and processes more than 4 million messages. This could be achieved thanks to more than 5000 reporting points exchanging information with the system in real time. At the end of his presentation, Mr Reisinger noted that TIS will be the right system to meet TAF TSI requirements, to comply with the new Freight Regulation and to ensure the availability of new products.

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Managing Board Speed Dating and Corridor Manager Area

After this compact information update about the work carried out by RNE in 2011, the more interactive part of the Conference started. A Corridor Manager Area with all eleven RNE Corridor Managers had been created and a Speed-Dating session with all the members of the RNE Managing Board had been organised. The Speed Dating gave conference participants the opportunity to talk to the RNE MB Member(s) of their choice. This year, more than 40 participants took part in the Speed Dating and took the opportunity to exchange ideas and opinions about the future of the railway industry in Europe.
Beside these two events, the open networking areas – including presentations of the three RNE IT systems (PCS, TIS and CIS) – attracted many participants.

Panel Discussion

The afternoon session dealt with the topic – ‘RAIL CORRIDORS 2020 - From a political and business perspective‘. RNE was happy to attract a number of prominent speakers for the panel discussion:

• Patrizio Grillo
  Deputy Head of Unit, Single European Rail Area, DG Move, EC
• Libor Lochman
  Executive Director of Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER)
• Matthias Kurth
  Chairman of the Independent Regulators’ Group (IRG-Rail)
• Dirk Stahl
  CEO of BLS Cargo AG, Deputy CEO of BLS AG
• Paul Mazataud
  Managing Director of ERTMS Corridor C / RFC 2
• Monika Heiming
  Executive Director of European Rail Infrastructure Managers (EIM)
• Harald Hotz
  Vice-President of RailNetEurope

The panel discussion started with presentations by the panelists, where their organisations’ points of views were presented. Patrizio Grillo from the European Commission showed the planned timeline for the new Rail Corridors and stated how much he appreciated the work done by RNE. Libor Lochman from CER pointed out that, in his opinion, a Corridor Coordinator is strongly needed and wished to know what RUs exactly expected from the future Rail Corridors. Matthias Kurth from IRG-Rail introduced his newly-founded organisation and asked for IRG-Rail to be integrated into RNE discussions. Dirk Stahl from BLS Cargo shared the point of view of his  organisation on the topic. He described some future procedures and stated that interoperability is one of the main issues. Paul Mazataud from Corridor C / 2 presented the achievements of his organisation and showed which journey time reductions were possible with the help of Corridor Organisations. The last statement made before the panel discussion was by Monika Heiming, the new Executive Director of EIM, in which she presented a critical overview of the 3 different corridor concepts (ERTMS, TEN-T, RFC).

After these statements, a lively discussion arose on various issues surrounding the future Rail Freight Corridors. Several questions regarding TAF / TAP TSI, container overflow in ports, future investment in the rail business, and much more, were asked and discussed with the panelists. The outcome of the discussion was that all panelists agreed about the importance of the future Rail Corridors and that RNE would play an important role as service provider of choice. In addition the involvement of RNE in international passenger traffic was discussed.

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Closing Remarks and Farewell Winter Punch

After some closing remarks by the RNE President, the Conference ended with a Farewell Winter Punch. The positive feedback received from the participants immediately after the Conference tells us that the chosen conference format is proving successful and that participants are still very much in favour of the interactive approach chosen by RNE.

RNE would like to thank all speakers and participants for their contributions and attendance.

Business Conference 2011 Impressions

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