SHIFT2RAIL is a joint technical initiative that will handle all railway research within Horizon 2020. The founding members are Trafikverket, Network Rail, Bombardier, Alstom, Siemens, Ansaldo STS, CAF and Thales, together with the European Commission. The total budget for the program during 2015-2024 is about 800 million €. Shift2Rail has five main innovation programs that can briefly be described as development of vehicles, signal systems, infrastructure, information systems and freight traffic. The overall ambitious targets are to double the capacity of the European rail system, and increase its reliability and service quality by 50%, all while halving the lifecycle costs.
As a part of the Swedish rail research program “Capacity in the railway traffic system” (in Swedish abbreviated “KAJT”), SICS Swedish ICT will be a part of Shift2Rail, acting as a partner to the Swedish infrastructure manager Trafikverket. The first research projects within Shift2Rail are expected to start in autumn of 2016. SICS Swedish ICT will mostly be active in areas related to resource optimization, like yard- and timetable planning, areas in which SICS has vast previous experience.
“We have noticed a great interest in the upcoming Shift2Rail-projects, both from researchers around Europe and from the railway industry. We are looking forward to developing the close relationship to Trafikverket and other research organizations in this field during the next years and we are proud to be a part of this”, says Martin Joborn, senior researcher at SICS Swedish ICT and coordinator of the research program KAJT.
More information: http://www.shift2rail.org
