The IRRB Area 01 Working Group at the Railway Research Institute (Instytut Kolejnictwa – IK)

On 2 and 3 March 2017, a meeting of the International Rail Research Board (UIC IRRB) was held At the Railway Research Institute in Warsaw. The IRRB was founded by UIC General Assembly in order to coordinate activities for effective implementation of technological, technical and organizational innovations in rail transport.  The IRRB Chairman is Prof. Boris Lapidus (RZD), Vice Chairmen include Vicky Brown (ACRI), Güven Kandemir (TCDD), Prof. Marc Robinson (Newcastle University), Roman Štěrba (CD) and Dr. Andrzej Żurkowski (Instytut Kolejnictwa).

The Area 01 Working Group meeting on 2 March was led by Dr. Andrzej Żurkowski. The aim was to develop a plan to update and introduce possible changes into UIC document “Global Vision for Railway Development” (GVRD).

The discussion related to priorities in rail development and differences between developing and developed countries. The necessity to adopt technical solutions on differentiated level due to e.g. differences in infrastructure was stressed.

Future challenges for rail transport connected with GVRD (for instance on tramway and railway transport as the transport of the future), priorities of global transport development taking into consideration differences between countries and regions of the world were discussed on the second day, at the first Plenary IRRB under a new chair. A certain amount of flexibility was assumed in the approach to railway interoperability due to differences in technical equipment of railways in different countries.

Special attention was drawn to social changes in future market segments. It was agreed to put more stress on intermodality, simple, effective and inexpensive solutions, integration of services of different means of transport, gap between highly technically developed countries such as Japan and low standards in developing countries. Dr. A. Massel suggested taking use of the outcomes of the EU and UIC projects in 01 Working Area . In addition, he stressed the need of coordination and cooperation in conducting tasks in various IRRB areas and also he paid attention to include world mega trends in  GVRD.