The railways could do much to sustain mobility in the next century. However, while unease is growing about the negative effects of transport, rail's market share still declines. The main reason is dissatisfaction with the price and quality of rail transport, despite encouraging examples of new services. Rail is felt not to respond to market changes or customers' needs, as other modes do. The European Commission believes that railways should play a much greater role in tackling the transport challenges facing the Community, as we move towards the new century. Urgent action is required to revitalise the sector, so that it performs better and more fully satisfies the demands of our society. For this, Europe needs a new kind of railway. It is against this widely recognised background that the Community has developed the railway element of its overall transport policy. A number of ideas have been suggested and regrouped under the White Paper "A strategy for revitalising the Community's railways", and more recently concrete proposals have been made under the intermodality chapter and the transEuropean freight freeway new policy. In parallel, operators and industry have joined forces to prepare the necessary instruments for the railways of the new millennium: a number of projects launched under the Transport Research programme and the Telematics Applications programme (programmes of the EU 4th Framework Programme for RTD) are contributing to the development of systems and services to improve railway systems. In addition, projects financed under the TransEuropean Transport Network (TEN-T) policy are helping to deploy and demonstrate the potential benefits of those telematics applications that will create the basis for a new kind of railway, an intelligent transport system.
Abstract