Cooperation within the Rail Sector

The main objectives of SMART-RAIL are to improve the rail freight services with a focus on the quality aspects: reliability, visibility, flexibility, costs and lead time. One line of solutions is to be found in the improved (horizontal) cooperation within the rail sector. Work Package 3, which started in October 2015 will deal with this topic. The tasks of the WP are amongst others the identification of the requirements of the involved stakeholders and the assessment of the current barriers that hinder or complicate cooperation in the rail sector.

The main focus will be on the organisational and administrative issues however in case infrastructure related aspects play a role in the required solutions then of course this will be taken up in the discussions as well.

The objective is to obtain successful cooperation in the rail sector in different market segments and to design effective and feasible business models and governance models. In addition the solutions applied in real life situations in SMART-RAIL’s Continuous Improvement Tracks will be validated and new insights gained will be used to improve the general methodology. For these activities we have a broad range of expertise and practical experience in the team of involved SMART-RAIL partners and stakeholders. We aim for an optimal mix of theoretical and practical approaches to ensure realistic outputs.

The results will include an overview of effective and feasible business models and governance models to support horizontal cooperation in the rail sector to improve the rail freight service for clients. These will be defined in a roadmap including the description of an implementation plan.