The deployment of the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) has the objective to ensure that more passenger and freight transport can be accommodated on the network. It achieves improvements in interoperability, safety, reliability and higher speed demands. The programme in the Netherlands is also driven by the need to renew, due to end-of-life of the Class B signalling assets, and in particular the future shortage of workforce needed for maintaining and engineering.

The ERTMS programme is a major technical and realisation task. Following the current way of executing projects the complete roll-out of the ERTMS system is planned towards 2050. This does not meet the core growth ambition of infra manager ProRail. There is need to speed things up.

To encourage the industry to develop innovations that are not yet known ProRail has entered into an ‘innovation partnership’ with twelve companies in order to boost the introduction of ERTMS. This is the result of ASAP: the faster tender approach for ERTMS, aimed at accelerating the deployment of ERTMS. ProRail has asked the market to come up with innovative solutions for smart construction along the rail track, faster design, smart enclosures, and faster cable and pipe construction. In addition, there is the ‘wildcard’ for ideas that do not fit into one of these categories.

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This is how EIM members concretely celebrate the 2021 European Year of Rail!