Making railway freight transport efficient for both the 1520 and the 1435 mm gauges is an ambitious and complex project. Despite its well-known advantages, especially for heavy and massive goods, railway transport is burdened by elements related both to technical and legislative aspects. These are the barriers that need to be removed in order to create an interoperable network throughout the entire Europe, but also on the corridors providing links to Asia.
The representatives of the European railway sector believe that it is ne-cessary to take measures in order to increase the attractiveness of this type of transport in direct relationship with its beneficiaries by making sure freight trains are punctual and regular. Step by step, a railway network will be dedicated exclusively to goods transport, so that this mode of transport would be preferred by traders.
As part of the DIOMIS rail project, UIC held a conference in Vienna at the end of March 2010 and one of the conclusions of the UIC study, launched via DIOMIS, was that referring to the location of hinterland traffic as development segment in the near future. The study foresees a traffic shift from the North-South axis to the East-West axis and anticipates an average growth rate of 8% if a few important conditions are met.
On this matter, the industry representatives have expressed their opinions about the conditions necessary to keep ensuring the modal shift to railways through concrete business situations. Infrastructure investments and modernizations so that it would allow the access of longer and heavier trains, coordinating the development of railway terminals, the availability of equipments (cars and units), cross-border interoperability, non-discriminatory access to terminals, efficient services, as well as the track access charges were mentioned as priorities to make sure growth forecasts will occur.
One of the most efficient methods to simplify and harmonise cross-border traffic is the TAF TSIs, developed to facilitate the international information exchange regarding cross-border rail freight ser-vices. One of the methods for increasing the attractiveness of rail freight transport is reducing the volume of necessary documents. Sector organisations and profile associations, as well as railway state or private operators cooperate in facilitating these procedures especially in international transport.
One of the objectives of the International Rail Transport Committee (CIT) is the interoperability of shipping regime that hosts the operations of freight transport companies, more precisely obtaining the legal interoperability of the CIM/SMGS consignment note.
In May 2010, on the occasion of the reunion of the Management Committee, established through the International Convention on the Harmonisation of Frontier Controls of Goods (signed in Geneva in 1982), adopted a new annex to the Convention on simplifying border crossing procedures for the international railway freight transport.
The specific annex aims at facilitating international trade by reducing, harmonising and coordinating the administrative procedures and formalities concerning border control of goods for the international railway freight transport. In fact, the Annex contains obligations aimed to reduce the delays of cargo trains at border crossings.
They refer to introducing minimal requirements for border station (exchange), cooperation between countries in these border stations, moving control from borders to departure or arrival stations, reducing control time and the number of paper documents.
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