With the primary concern to improve rail traffic on the Corridor Rotterdam – Mannheim – Basel – Genoa the rail infrastructure managers of ProRail, DB Netz, BLS Infrastructure, SBB Infrastructure and RFI united 2008 in a cooperation named EEIG (European Economic Interest Group) Corridor Rotterdam - Genoa. Now these Rail Infrastructure Managers passed a common communiqué.

Therein the five infrastructure managers declare their firm commitment to provide a modern, performing and interoperable rail infrastructure that meets the requirements of a growing market and supports the European Commission’s political targets of sustainable growth on Trans-European corridors. Considerable measures were defined and already implemented to increase quality on this important freight corridor.

An approved example for the successful work of the infrastructure managers is the so called “One Stop Shop” for requests of international train paths. Since the introduction of this customer focused service, the average response time for short-term path requests was – due to procedural optimisation – reduced by 30 percent to 6.4 working days. Pursuant to a customer survey carried out in 2008, this vital improvement fully meets the requirements from carriers point of view.

As a next step it is planned to create a catalogue of pre-constructed paths between the major hubs whenever useful for the customers.

In addition, a common Performance Management was developed. Due to the IT system “Europtirails” a real-time monitoring of trains along the corridor is available. The system provides valuable cross-border dispatching information for both railway undertakings and infrastructure managers and has already been introduced on a major part of the corridor. Next year it is planned to arrange for the services of Europtirails on the entire corridor.

The excellent performance of the Corridor A as the main North-South rail freight feeder for the most powerful industries and economical centres of Europe is of utmost importance for the future sustainable development in Europe. With its well structured enhancement program and stringent organisation, this corridor yet plays the leading role in the development of a competitive European rail freight network.

The infrastructure managers point out that any EU initiative involving additional bureaucratic requirements and prescriptions for the operational business has the potential to be counterproductive impairing therefore the effectiveness of the existing cooperation.