Rail Connected gains momentum

The ‘Rail Connected’ programme has been running for over a year now. The bar was set high right from the start: ‘Take the first step towards boosting rail freight traffic growth’. How are things going one year on? A sector update: ‘Great that the first steps have now been taken as we’ve been working on this for a long time.’

The aim is to use digitisation to streamline information exchange between carriers, rail operators and terminals, thereby reducing manual operations. At the start of the project, Matthijs van Doorn, Director of Commerce at the Port of Rotterdam Authority, stated: ‘It is our aim to continue to build a competitive rail offer. We can only succeed if we take additional steps in efficiency, transparency and reliability. Digitisation and data sharing are essential for this.’

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Work is pressing ahead with step 2 now that the first step, ‘train pre-notification’, has been implemented. ‘By end 2023, we want to have a clear digital picture of how each train is configured,’ explained Braat from Portbase. ‘Which locomotive, how many carriages, of which type and which carriage is carrying which container.’

Mutual trust

‘If everyone has insight into the train configuration we’ll be able to prevent a lot of “waste”,’ added Van Bokkem. ‘Errors will be discovered earlier, capacity put to better use and cancellations can be identified in time so you can schedule in another container. Once we’ve arranged this, it will not only improve the efficiency and reliability of rail freight transport as a product, but will also improve trust within the chain. That would really be a great step.’

Read the full article on the Port of Rotterdam website here: Rail Connected article