EUROPE: Another 17 research projects with a combined value of €110·9m have been selected for financing under the 2017 Call for Proposals, the Shift2Rail joint undertaking announced on June 14. These will share up to €60·1m of EU co-financing under the multi-year research programme.
The call for proposals had been issued in November, with a closing date of March 30. It attracted 60 applications from groups representing 412 organisations, with a total value of €192·8m. These applications were seeking co-financing totalling €136·5m, which was more than twice the €60·8m available.
Describing the response as ‘a record high’, Executive Director Carlo M Borghini said the JU had worked with a team of independent experts to ensure ‘a timely and effective evaluation’ in order to select the winning applications. He hoped this would enable the new projects to get underway ‘not later than September 1’.
The 27 Shift2Rail members submitted proposals under all seven of their reserved call topics with a total value of €91·4m; these will be co-funded up to €40·6m. The other 10 Open Call topics attracted 53 proposals requesting funding of €95·9m. Of these, 10 were selected to share the remaining €19·5m in this year’s budget.
Henrik Hololei, Director-General for Mobility & Transport at the European Commission, who chairs the S2R Governing Board, said he was ‘confident that the selected projects will contribute to the overall objectives of the S2R programme, offering innovative market-driven solutions to improve railways in Europe.’
Projects selected under the Shift2Rail 2017 call for proposals | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IP | Project | Co-ordinator | Topic | Grant, €m | |
| Member call | CCA | Impact-2 | DLR | Monitoring of cross-modal transport chains | 3·1 |
| IP1 | Pivot | Bombardier | Vehicle/track performance improvements | 3·4 | |
| IP2 | X2Rail-2 | Ansaldo STS | Dynamic train control and traffic management | 13·4 | |
| IP3 | In2Stempo | Network Rail | Future stations, energy monitoring and power supply | 6·0 | |
| IP4 | Connective | Indra | Connecting the digital transport ecosystem | 3·5 | |
| IP4 | Cohesive | Thales | Integrated travel services demonstration | 1·8 | |
| IP5 | Fr8Hub | Trafikverket | Real time information for rail freight | 4·4 | |
| Open call | CCA | SMaRTE | University of Leeds | Smart maintenance and the rail traveller experience | 0·8 |
| IP1 | Mat4Rail | Cidetec | Fire retardant composite materials | 3·5 | |
| IP1 | Run2Rail | UNIFE | Innovative running gear | 2·7 | |
| IP2 | ASTRail | Inst Mario Boella | Satellite-based signalling & automation | 1·8 | |
| IP2 | Etalon | UNIFE | Energy harvesting for signalling & communications | 1·7 | |
| IP3 | In2Dreams | UNIFE | Intelligent energy and asset management | 2·2 | |
| IP3 | FairStations | Stalli | Secure and accessible stations | 1·2 | |
| IP3 | Molint | E-Geos | Multi-scale monitoring of infrastructure threats | 0·6 | |
| IP4 | MyTrack | Univ Politecnica de Catalunya | My travel companion | 3·5 | |
| IP5 | Optiyard | UIC | Optimised real-time yard management | 1·5 | |
