“The long way towards an interoperable railway system”

In the beginning of the '90s, the European railway industry with support from the EU institutions engaged in creating a common railway signalling system. Over time, ETMS emerged as one of the most successful European industrial projects and is now on its way to making railway transport one of the most competitive transport modes.

Although railway transport is, by far, the safest, fastest and lowest CO2-emission mode of transport, it is, however, confronted with one of the most striving problems, that of cross-border traffic which is complex and difficult to manage and most of the times affects the competitiveness of this means of transport. Cross-border traffic is doubled by the differences of gauge, electrification systems, administrative procedures, that make interoperability difficult and increase operation costs.