Background
In October 2023 some of the “CTO Council” group members expressed concerns regarding financial and operational risks linked to the deployment of FRMCS and the current implementation of ETCS Onboard (ETCS-OB) Baseline 3. These concerns were due, among others, to the tight schedule for retrofitting several thousands of vehicles (ETCS-OB upgrade and FRMCS-OB equipment installation), product availability, and sunk costs. On this basis, it elaborated a set of two alternative proposals to the European Commission DG MOVE concerning the compatibility between the ETCS and FRMCS for a number of vehicles which are already equipped with ETCS B3MR1 or ETCS B3R2 products.
On 16 February 2024, the European Commission requested the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) to analyse and provide feedback on these proposals from the CTO Council. On 8 November 2024, ERA published the “Opinion ERA/OPI/2024-3 of the European Union Agency for Railways regarding ETCS-FRMCS compatibility1” (hereafter the “Opinion”).
Read the full paper here :