Page 40 - RFC Rhine-Alpine_Annual Report 2016

38 CORRIDOR RHINE-ALPINE – Annual Report 2016
Activities of the Executive Board
support implementation of the declaration urgently. It is expected that the Ministers will address the rail freight corridors again in 2018. The Ministerial Declaration and the adoption of the sector statement was developed also in close cooperation with the European Commission. The European Commission will deliver its evaluation report on the implementation of the Regulation (EU) 913/2010 in 2017 and is expected to take the declaration into account.
Setting up a network of Executive Boards of the rail freight corridors
As a follow-up to the Ministerial Declaration, the Executive Boards of all the railway freight corridors have stepped up their cooperation and worked towards establishing a net- work of Executive Boards. The network aims at exchanging best practices but also notes the option of developing “rec- ommendations” to be adopted by the individual rail freight corridors. The collective Executive Boards adopted its terms of reference following the meeting on 16 December 2016.2 The network is expected to work in 2017 towards to issue recommendations on implementing:
Exchange of digital data (ETA);
Common KPIs for the rail freight corridors.
The network decided to use the exchange of ETA infor- mation as a pilot project to improve cooperation between Executive Boards and the railway sector (including Infra- structure Managers, RUs, terminals, intermodal operators, etc.) working together in the rail freight corridors.
EU Rail Freight Day, 9 December 2016, Vienna
On the Rail Freight Day organised by RailNetEurope/the European Commission the rail freight corridors presented collectively their ten priorities for the cross-corridor imple- mentation of the Ministerial Declaration/sector state- ment.3 These priorities have also been agreed upon by the sector organisations that signed the sector statement and will be addressed by the railway sector in dialogue with (the network of) RFC Executive Boards.
Extension Vlissingen
In its meeting of 28 November 2016 in Rome, the ExB of RFC Rhine-Alpine adopted its decision to extend the Rail Freight Corridor to the Dutch port of Vlissingen according to Regulation (EU) 1316/2013 modifying the RFCs and aligning them with the TEN-T Core Network corridors.4 Vlissingen is connected with a principal line via the Betuwe- route (with Meteren infrastructure connection) with border crossings at Zevenaar–Emmerich to the German section of the corridor. With the extension to Vlissingen, regular
“The major enhancement for the rail freight corridor in 2016 was definitely the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel.”
EC consultation on regulation 913/2010/EC “towards a network of competitive rail freight transport”.
The European Commission carried out a consultation on the implementation of the 2010 regulation. The RFC Rhine-Alpine contributed to this by sending its progress report to the EC in September 2015. On 16 December 2016 several stakeholders active in the RFC Rhine-Alpine contributed to the EC workshop on the topic. European Commission representatives announced in early 2017 the start of a possible revision process (launching of impact assessment) was delayed until the end of 2017, awaiting sector action to implement the sector statement adopted on 21 June 2016 in Rotterdam.
2 See under section European context https://www.corridor-rhine-alpine.eu/downloads.html
3 See slides 54-57 of http://www.rne.eu/tl_files/RNE_Upload/Jakob/Master %20Presentation.pdf
4 See website under European context for full text of decision https://www.corridor-rhine-alpine.eu/downloads.html