“Today’s decision marks a clear commitment from the European Commission and the EU Member States to accelerate ERTMS deployment in Europe through a truly coordinated approach”, said Michael Clausecker, Director General of UNIFE. “Achieving a fully interoperable railway system is indispensible to compete with other modes of transport. ERTMS not only helps to achieve this objective but also provides considerable advantages in terms of safety, maintenance costs savings and traffic capacity, as illustrated by its growing success outside Europe”.

The European ERTMS deployment plan, which amends the technical specifications for interoperability for control-command and signalling subsystems (TSI CCS), recognises the importance of coordinating investments by gradually making ERTMS mandatory along the six ERTMS corridors, in addition to a designated list of busy routes across Europe. Depending on the sections, ERTMS will have to be installed in 2015 and 2020 respectively. Such coordinated approach will ensure that investments by different countries are made in a similar time frame and that interoperability can be achieved on the busiest railway routes in Europe.

The European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) aims at replacing more than 20 different national train control and command systems in Europe, which are a major technical barrier to international rail traffic. ERTMS introduces considerable benefits in terms of interoperability, maintenance cost savings, increased safety and increased traffic capacity. By making the rail sector more competitive, ERTMS helps to level the playing field against road transport and ultimately provides significant environmental gains. There is an estimated 33,000km of railway tracks contracted to be equipped or are already operating with ERTMS in the world, nearly 50% of which are outside the EU.

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For more information please contact

Emmanuel Brutin
Public Affairs Manager
Tel.: +32 2 626 12 68
emmanuel.brutin@unife.org