GVRD II – Global Vision for Railway Development II

A UIC General Assembly and its bodies’ statutory meetings were held in Budapest on 24-25 June 2019.

One of the meetings was a Plenary Launch Meeting of IRRB (International Railway Research Board) – a UIC international research platform whose task is the coordination of a global railway cooperation in the area of research and innovation. IRRB was tasked to update the GVRD – Global Vision for Railway Development – document, which had been prepared under the responsibility of the chairman and the IRRB vice-chairman, Dr. Eng. Andrzej Żurkowski, the Director of the Railway Research Institute.

In order to discuss this issue in an international dimension, the Railway Research Institute together with the UIC jointly organized an international conference „Global Debate on Mobility Challenges for the Future Society” in Warsaw on 15 – 16 November 2018. Conclusions and proposals acquired in this way were further elaborated in detail by an international Working Group from February to June 2019 both in an electronic formula and via participation in meetings organized in Paris and Warsaw.

Due to the UIC structure, a global document then required consultation with all UIC members and approval by the UIC Regions and Assistants. It was finally accepted by the General Assembly during a meeting in Budapest. The Institute involved, among others, its specialists to develop three chapters of the GVRD and supervised the update of the rest of the entire text. The IRRB and the General Assembly expressed their gratitude and applauded the Director of the Institute for the professional performance of the entire process.

The aim of the new GVRD document is to:

• Help railways develop and optimise rail systems of the future in order to take advantage of opportunities and satisfy growing customer and societal requirements,
• Identify best practice in order to provide examples and guidance; most appropriate examples of best practice provided as case studies from in and outside the railways,
• Support the Rail Operating Community in making rail more attractive to users and eventually to establish rail as the backbone of the transport system

Then the document will also be presented at the 12th WCRR (World Congress on Railway Research) in Tokyo at the end of October 2019.