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Rail Articles

The festival city of Salzburg gets a unique entrée

4 August 2010 | By Johannes Gfrerer, Spokesman for the Salzburg Region, ÖBB-Holding AG and Thomas Wörndl, Project Manager for the reconstruction of the Salzburg Hauptbahnhof

€270 million will be invested in the creation of a unique transport station in the festival city of Salzburg that is to be completed by 2014. The new through station will do full justice to the requirements of a modern railway age as a regional and international transport hub. High…

Gotthard and Ceneri take major steps forward

4 August 2010 | By Renzo Simoni, CEO, AlpTransit Gotthard Ltd

Construction of the new Gotthard line with the Gotthard and Ceneri Base Tunnels is on course. In October 2010, a further milestone will be the final breakthrough of the Gotthard: the miners will excavate the last stretch of rock between the portals at Erstfeld and Bodio/Pollegio. On the Ceneri, in…

Construction of cross-city link helps relieve capacity limits

4 August 2010 | By Marco Ceriani, Line Section Manager for the Weinberg Tunnel, SBB Infrastructure

Zurich Hauptbahnhof (Zurich main station, or Zurich HB) is the central hub for rail traffic in Switzerland. Trains pull in and out of the station virtually every minute, and over 300,000 passengers depart, arrive or change trains here daily. Commuter traffic is forecast to grow in the coming years, and…

Taking the ‘action not reaction’ future approach

4 August 2010 | By Philippe Gauderon, Head of SBB Infrastructure and Member of the SBB Management Board

Most of the SBB rail network is in good condition. That was the conclusion of an external survey commissioned by SBB and published in February 2010. Future maintenance and renewal of the rail infrastructure will cost significantly more than was previously assumed. SBB Infrastructure has embarked on a comprehensive action…

SMART Surveying

4 August 2010 | By Angus W. Stocking, Industry Author

Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) is an overwhelmingly popular rail initiative in Northern California and is to begin service in 2014. Planners estimate that the new commuter rail system can be built for approximately $7.1 million dollars per mile, which compares very favourably to the cost of extending other local…

The case for high-speed rail – Britain’s 21st century travel solution

4 August 2010 | By Prof Andrew McNaughton FREng, Chief Engineer, High Speed Two Ltd and Global Railway Review Editorial Board Member

In Britain, about once a century for the last few hundred years a new long-distance surface transport system has been planned and built to meet the developing needs of a continually advancing society. The 18th century brought the canals and the 19th the railways, both initially more focussed on transporting…

Developing high-speed rail transport in Russia

4 August 2010 | By Vladimir Yakunin, President, Russian Railways

The changing economic situation in Russia, and the increase in business and transport activity among the country’s population in recent years, served as an incentive to draw up the Programme for the Development of High-Speed and Very High-Speed Transport, as part of the Strategy for Developing Rail Transport in the…

Energy efficiency in high-speed train operation

4 August 2010 | By Paloma Cucala García and Antonio Fernández Cardador IIT, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, España

Reduction of energy consumption has become a global concern, and the EU is committed to reducing its overall emissions to at least 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. In the transport sector, measures are focused on planning, infrastructure, modal change, the renewal of vehicles and also programmes for efficient driving.…

Improving Melbourne’s metropolitan train system one step at a time

3 August 2010 | By Andrew Lezala, CEO, Metro Trains Melbourne (Metro)

Six months in to its contract as operator of Melbourne’s metropolitan train network, Metro’s focus is firmly on improving asset reliability, simplifying the timetable and making every minute count. In 2009, the Victorian Government selected a new contractor to operate Melbourne’s metropolitan rail services. The network assets, which are Government-owned…

NoBo’s – providing competent, independent and impartial assessments for the railway industry

3 August 2010 | By Jean-Marc Dupas, Chairman of NB-Rail and Managing Director of Belgorail

Former Railway Interoperability Directives (96/48/EC and 2001/16/EC and their amendments) have been repealed on 19 July 2010 by the Directive 2008/57/EC on the interoperability of the rail system within the Community. These directives have changed the way that fixed railway infrastructure, the rolling stock that runs on it and certain…

More than signals and sleepers

3 August 2010 | By Nelson Ogunshakin, Chief Executive, ACE (Association for Consultancy and Engineering)

Rail transport is essential to the UK’s economy. The Eddington Transport Study of 2006 found a clear link between transport capacity and economic performance, and noted that transport was an enabler of economic growth rather than a creator of growth in itself. Crossrail, for example, is expected to generate around…

High-speed in Italy and liberalisation

3 August 2010 | By Mauro Moretti, CEO, Ferrovie dello Stato Group

The FS Group (Italian State Railways) is the largest company in Italy, which has helped boost the Country’s growth, thanks also to the recent launch of the high-speed service. The Group has successfully completed a process of internal reorganisation that has turned it into a modern and efficient reality, up-to-date…

The kick-off for Italo has been set

3 August 2010 | By Giuseppe Sciarrone, Managing Director, Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori S.p.a. (NTV)

NTV, the first Italian private high-speed operator, will start commercial service in September 2011. We officially announced the kick-off date in a press conference we held in Rome at the end of May 2010. We therefore have 15 months of tough work ahead to complete the necessary steps to ultimate…

Ready for the challenges

31 May 2010 | By Juhan Parts, Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications, Estonia

Steering the global recession to an upswing assumes new ideas and solutions from all economic sectors, and a well-functioning transportation system is one of the most important success factors in this process – we can accelerate growth of the economy only with efficient logistics.

Norway’s tough winter challenge and double-track progress

31 May 2010 | By Elisabeth Enger, Director General, Jernbaneverket

The past winter was unusually tough and challenging for Norwegian railways. Almost three months of continuous cold weather took their toll on ageing and well-worn infrastructure, resulting in record low punctuality and a large number of train cancellations. Never before have we experienced such poor punctuality over such a prolonged…