This May the European Commission adopted a new technical specification for interoperability (TSI) on the subsystem “traffic exploitation and management” of the Trans-European conventional railway system. However, the Commission specifies that the specific TSI set in the annex doesn’t have to impose the use of specific technologies or technical solutions, except for the cases when it is absolutely necessary for the interoperability of the Trans-European conventional railway system.
The technical interoperability specification established in the present decision is applied to the traffic exploitation and management subsystem defined at paragraph 2.4 of annex II of Directive 57/2008 (on the interoperability of the Community railway system) and which refers to the on-board command & control and signalling. The present decision applies to all member states starting with January 1, 2012 and could be consulted in the UE’s Official Journal.
Therefore, the present technical specification for interoperability sets the essential requirements for the specific subsystem and for its interfaces related to other subsystems. It also sets operational and technical specifications.
The new TSI determines the constitutive interoperability elements and the interfa-ces which are regulated by European specifications, including European standards, necessary to ensure the interoperability in the Trans-European conventional railway system.
The present TSI applies to the “traffic exploitation and management” subsystem of infrastructure managers and railway companies on the exploitation of trains on the Trans-European conventional railway lines. The requirements regulate main aspects such as safety, reliability and avai-lability, environment protection and technical compatibility.
It is compulsory for member states to notify the European Commission about a series of types of agreements in the first six months after the new technical specification for interoperability becomes effective, on condition that it had not been already notified under Decision 920/2006 which refers to the TSIs on the “traffic exploitation and management” subsystem of the Trans-European conventional and high-speed railway system.
Thus, national agreements between member states and railway undertakings or railway managers permanently or temporarily signed, necessary due to the very specific or local nature of the specific transport service, will be notified. The new TSI also regulates the bilateral or multila-teral agreements between railway undertakings, infrastructure managers and the authorities responsible for safety, providing significant levels of local and regional interoperability.
Moreover, member states will also notify international agreements between one or several member states and at least a third country or between railway undertakings or infrastructure managers in the member states and at least one railway undertaking or infrastructure manager in a third country, providing significant levels of local and regional interoperability.
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