INTRO: Over the past six months, the stake-holders in the European Rail Research Institute have been reviewing its long-term role in the changing shape of railway research
BYLINE: Drs Gunnar Gustafsson
Managing Director,European Rail Research Institute
CHANGE has become a way of life for the world’s railways, sweeping through the industry for a decade or more. And perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the area of research. Fragmentation, commercialisation and constant restructuring has revealed serious deficiencies in the way that innovation and development are funded, organised, and - most significantly - co-ordinated.
Next year will be a turning point for the European Rail Research Institute, as it too faces up to the tidal wave of change, and charts a new course as a pan-industry centre of excellence. As well as plugging the gulf left by the haemorrhaging of experience, we see a growing need for international co-ordination as part of the drive for interoperability.
ERRI has achieved a great deal since it was set up in 1950 as the Office de Recherche et d’Essais, a department of the International Union of Railways. At that time, ORE’s role was essentially to conduct research, studies and tests in areas of common interest on behalf of all UIC member railways. But as UIC’s remit became global, ORE continued to work primarily with the European railways. This was reflected in the change of name in 1992, and the subsequent transformation of ERRI into a legally-independent not-for-profit foundation.
In 1995 the wholly-owned subsidiary European Rail Services was launched to market the institute’s services on a commercial basis. However, this has not been totally successful. The volume of work undertaken on behalf of UIC and its member railways has declined, but UIC-sponsored research still accounts for more than 70% of ERRI’s project income. Commercial contracts have simply not materialised.
The gulf of separation
The separation of responsibilities between operators and infrastructure managers, the emergence of new competitive operators, and the introduction of competitive tendering brought a shift of engineering responsibilities from the railways towards the supply industry. Suppliers also became involved with day-to-day maintenance, gaining vital feedback.
This increasingly fragmented the responsibility for research, with a reduction in ’fundamental’ development and a growing loss of co-ordination between individual projects. Despite efforts by UIC and other players, no consistent, co-ordinated programme has emerged.
The European Union’s Framework Programme has attempted to encourage free-thinking research into the rail mode, but this has been stultified by its increasingly bureaucratic and cumbersome procedures. Once again, there has been a clear lack of consistency, co-ordination and continuity in the conduct of research and the implementation of its results.
Across the continent, the loss of opportunity has been huge. Railway after railway has experienced disruption from poor performance by new equipment, as suppliers repeat the same mistakes and struggle along the learning curve. Ironically, just as Europe’s politicians are mandating new levels of interoperability, lowest-cost procurement has lumbered some railways with different designs of equipment that are not even compatible with each other.
Today, as we face the massive task of achieving a workable level of interoperability across the EU, there is once again a clear need for the central co-ordination of research. I believe that ERRI has the necessary capabilities to contribute towards this consistency, co-ordination and continuity. As an integral, yet independent, part of the European railway community, ERRI is uniquely positioned to help bring about the integration that is so obviously lacking today.
Setting a new mission
Over the past nine months, UIC and other stakeholders have been undertaking a fundamental rethink of ERRI’s role. Under the Strategy for European Rail Research & Technical Development, ERRI would provide support for railway research, by all industry stakeholders - not just UIC. The aim is to create a European Rail Research Strategy Group, with ERRI as its executive arm.
This would create a research platform for industry-wide standardisation and harmonisation, involving both suppliers and end users. The same platform would support pre-competitive system development, along the lines of ETCS and GSM-R. In conjunction with the new interoperability association AEIF, ERRI would provide the research capabilities for development of Technical Specifications for Interoperability.
Under its ’European Research Area’ strategy, the EU is about to externalise its organisational and technical expertise to manage rail research. We see this as another role for ERRI, encompassing all relevant technical, operational, safety and management expertise that constitutes the science of the railway as ’a complete technical and operational system’. ERRI would bring the depth of experience needed to provide an overview and understanding of the interactions, which is no longer automatically available elsewhere.
Whilst ERRI is familiar with the work of its traditional ’railway’ stakeholders, it would need to learn more about the range of business sectors covered by the wider railway industry - heavy rail, metros and light rail, infrastructure managers, and suppliers and maintenance contractors. It would also need a clear understanding of the need for Europe-wide rail research from both the perspectives of the industry and the EU.
Wider stakeholding
This new role means that ERRI should no longer be ’owned’ by UIC alone. Our hope is that other bodies such as UNIFE, UITP and CER will ’buy in’ as equal partners with UIC in the ERRI supervisory board and equity capital. Each organisation will contribute an annual ’membership fee’ to fund the core work. AEIF is already a subsidiary of the same stakeholders. The Directorates-General for Energy & Transport and Research at the European Commission support this analysis. All being well, we hope to relaunch the institute during the course of 2002.
In the longer term, ERRI may also abandon its traditional headquarters in Utrecht. Three of the new stakeholders, UNIFE, UITP and CER, have their offices in Brussels, as do the two EC directorates. Brussels is also significantly closer to UIC headquarters in Paris. However, if agreed, any move would have to be carefully phased.
’ERRI would bring the depth of experience needed to provide an overview and understanding of the interactions, which is no longer automatically available elsewhere.’
