Collaboration
Rail Sweden gathers academia, business and public sector across geographical borders in order to develop a competitive rail freight based on digitalization and automation. We are a part of a broad network and we're looking for actors who want to join the journey.
To achieve an accessible and usable railway system, collaborations on local and international levels are crucial. In Rail Sweden we work with initiatives within Sweden and at an European level and our involvement in Europe started with the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking. This was the first European initiative which gathered the railway sector to develop innovative solutions established with funding from the Horizon 2020 programme. In 2021 Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking became Europe's Rail Joint Undertaking (also called EU-Rail) and is still a part of the Horizon Europe programme.
Rail Sweden - a key partner in the DAC-project
To enforce parts of the work of EU-Rail, the European DAC Delivery Programme (EDDP) is a sector initiative enabled by EU-Rail. The aim is to accelerate the development of the innovation digital automatic coupler (DAC). One major benefit with EDDP is that more actors from various countries can easily get involved, which is a crucial aspect when it comes to defining requirements and a standard for DAC to be used all over Europe as well a strategy for implementation.
The first projects with funding from EU-Rail started in 2022. Rail Sweden is especially involved in the project called TRANS4M-R. The project aims for seamless freight transport and digital freight train operations with DAC as an important enabler. With this big project running, focusing on achieving high technical readiness, EDDP can now focus on the migration aspect of DAC.
Read more about our collaborations Europe's Rail, European DAC Delivery Programme and Shift2Rail below.
Europe's Rail
The vision of the Europe's Rail Joint Undertaking is to deliver an integrated system approach, a high capacity, flexible, multi-modal and reliable integrated European railway network. This will be achieved by eliminating barriers to interoperability and providing solutions for full integration. EU-Rail is expected to help improve the efficiency of the rail system and reduce overall lifecycle costs, including on less used lines. This will contributed to a more sustainable transport and mobility system.
Rail Sweden is involved as an associated partner to Trafikverket in the projects below.
European DAC Delivery Programme
The programme was initiated to ensure a successful and effective implementation of the Digital Automatic Coupler (DAC) for European rail freight.
The DAC programme is enabled by Europe’s Rail and offers an unique European platform for cooperation for actors within the rail freight sector like railway undertakings, infrastructure managers and wagon keepers. The rail supply industry who are in charge of maintenance, rail research centres and national and European political institutions are also a part of the platform.
The aim is is to provide all the European freight wagons with automated couples by 2030. One milestone and success was the selection of the future DAC standard. Now the focus is on producing efficient and cross-countries compatible migration, business plans and identifying possible European funding to support the migration plan.
Shift2Rail
Shift2Rail focus on research, innovation and market-driven solutions. The scope is also to accelerate the introduction of new and advanced technological solutions, products and services. Since 2016 Shift2Rail has run projects related to sustainable freight, increased capacity on infrastructure, traffic management, IT solutions for rail services and efficient passenger trains.
Trafikverket is one of the founding members and work in collaboration with Lindholmen Science Park in the projects below.
Do you want to contribute to an accelerated development?
We´re looking for companies, academia and students who want to participate in innovative projects in order to develop rail freight into a competitive transport system. Welcome to contact us if you want to discuss different prospects and project cooperation.
