CCCCustomer-driven RRRRail-freight services on an EEEEuropean mega-corridor

based on AAAAdvanced business and operating MMMModels

1 The CREAM Project

Newsletter February 2008Newsletter February 2008Newsletter February 2008Newsletter February 2008

BackgroundBackgroundBackgroundBackground

Initiated by important stakeholders of the railway business, the CREAM-Project has been set up to respond to the increasing demand for rail-based logistic systems.

Within the framework of the project customer-driven rail-freight services will be developed and established on a European mega-corridor, draw-ing a bow between Western/Central Europe and the Balkan states to-wards Turkey/Greece.

CREAM will lead to an increase in rail freight transport on this important East-West freight corridor. The CREAM Project is co-funded by the European Commission within the 6th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Devel-opment.

NewslettersNewslettersNewslettersNewsletters This Newsletter is an official publication of the CREAM Project bringing you the latest information on the project work and important developments of the project partner companies such as changes in the company structure and new services.

The CREAM Project Management will publish a newsletter in irregular order at important milestones of the project. This first issue covers following main topics:

• General Assembly of the CREAM Project in January 2008

• Current status of work package 5.3 – Streamlining Border Crossing Procedures

• Project News

All newsletters will be published on the CREAM project website. If you are interested to get informed about the next issue, please send an e-mail to subscribe-newsletter@cream-project.eu.

Coordinated by

HaCon Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH

Lister Straße 15

D-30163 Hannover

Phone: +49-511-33699-0

Fax: +49-511-33699-99

E-Mail: info@cream-project.eu

Website: www.cream-project.eu Co-funded by the European Commission

under the 6th Framework Programme

Ladies and gentlemen,

In 2007 Kombiverkehr, for the first time transported more than 1 million consignments on rail and thereby avoided CO2 emission of more than 980.000 tonnes. That became possible by different factors that were developed jointly with our customers and suppliers.

Among others the following we back on

• Principle of neutrality towards our customers - for-warders and transport operators: Equal treatment of their needs, development of common products to support their logistics concepts;

• Improved production systems and business processes geared to the market requirements: a set of domestic services and international relations on major European transport axes are connected in gateways to form a dense European service network with more than 15.000 daily connections;

• Cooperation models with partner companies along these axes: in 2007 – jointly with our partner Adria Kombi – we created Europe Intermodal based in Is-tanbul, Turkey.

Despite these achievements we observe that structural barriers are impeding a further growth of combined transport:

• A crowded rail network with only marginal spare ca-pacity on the major routes and low riding conditions on the extremities;

• Lack of terminal capacity in important hub terminals and in particular Eastern European countries;

• Need to invest in more and new wagons to offer car-rying capacity for our customers;

• Not co-ordinated border crossing activities and lack of customer information from the railways.

The CREAM project is targeting at solving or at least miti-gating some of these challenges with respect to the trans-European transport corridor Rotterdam/Antwerp to Turkey and Greece.

We are therefore very proud to host its first year General Assembly here in Frankfurt am Main.

Kombiverkehr is renewing their intention to further improve the services on the corridor by

• Seeking to expand the network jointly with part-ners and railways, e.g. the München – Ljubljana – Halkali service,

• Supporting interoperability, when commercially viable, e.g. by our own traction on the Betuwe-Lijn Rotterdam-Duisburg,

• Developing a customer information system based on train monitoring data of the railways,

• Integrating customers needs by dedi-cated technical-operational measures, e.g. with respect to temperature con-trolled logistics.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are also requir-ing your contribution to fulfil the CREAM objectives which will lay foundation for a further increase of combined transport in Europe. In this respect I am interested to listen to the progress reports.

Armin Riedl, Managing Director Kombiverkehr January 2008

“… the CREAM objectives

which will lay foundation

for a further increase of

combined transport in

Europe.“

Welcome Adress to the first General Assembly of the CREAM project:

1st General Assembly CREAM 14 January 2008 Frankfurt/Germany

Presented subjects :Presented subjects :Presented subjects :Presented subjects :

Innovative Supply Chains (RA.1),

Advanced Business Models (RA 2),

Quality Management Systems (RA 3),

Innovative Rail Operation Concepts (RA 4),

Interoperability And Border Crossing (RA 5),

Integrated Telematic Solutions (RA 6) and

Technology Driven Business Cases (RA 7).

Emmerich

Venlo

Aachen

SalzburgSopron

Tarvisio

Jesenice DobovaKelebia / Subotica

Biharkeresztes / Episcopia Bihor

Lököshaza / Curtici

Hegyeshalom

Tovarnik / Šid

Passau

Presevo / Tabanovce

Gevgelia / Idomeni Kulata /Promachon

Giorgiu / RuseDimitrovgrad /Dragoman

Svilengrad /Kapikule

CREAM Border Category

Category A

Category B

Category C

Emmerich

Venlo

Aachen

SalzburgSopron

Tarvisio

Jesenice DobovaKelebia / Subotica

Biharkeresztes / Episcopia Bihor

Lököshaza / Curtici

Hegyeshalom

Tovarnik / Šid

Passau

Presevo / Tabanovce

Gevgelia / Idomeni Kulata /Promachon

Giorgiu / RuseDimitrovgrad /Dragoman

Svilengrad /Kapikule

CREAM Border Category

Category A

Category B

Category C

CREAM Border Category

Category A

Category B

Category C

Newsletter February 2008Newsletter February 2008Newsletter February 2008Newsletter February 2008

Streamlining Border Crossing Operations (WP 5.3)Streamlining Border Crossing Operations (WP 5.3)Streamlining Border Crossing Operations (WP 5.3)Streamlining Border Crossing Operations (WP 5.3)

One of the major issues to reduce the overall trans-port time of rail services in South-East Europe is the optimisation of border processes and related border stopping times. Within the research works for this topic, 20 railway border crossings have been analysed on the CREAM corridor, taking into account the legal and technical framework. To group borders with similar characteristics, an ABC-categorisation has been carried out, taking into account the necessary processes for crossing the border:

• Technical and/or commercial trust agree-

ments are in place

• Operational standards on both sides of the

borders are harmonized

• No Customs checks or border police control

are necessary

Borders have been rated

• as Category ACategory ACategory ACategory A, if all conditions

are applicable,

• as Category BCategory BCategory BCategory B, if these

conditions are only partly

applicable and

• as Category CCategory CCategory CCategory C, if (almost)

no conditions are applicable.

The evaluations have shown, that there is a dependency between the respective border category and the time consumption of freight trains for crossing the border. Noting that the conditions in the West-European part of the corridor are much more advanced, than for the other parts, a knowledge transfer shall be secured to improve the overall conditions for international rail transports

The first part of the workshop had been organised as a forum for both project partner and selected experts, in order to ex-change knowledge and experiences on topics such as:

• CREAM border crossing analysis – approach and inter-mediate results

• UIC Study on the acceleration in the railway border crossing point for agreed RU cooperation

• Railion’s approach for evaluating cross border proce-dures

• Interoperability on the Brenner-Line – the experience of RTC and Lokomotion

In order to discuss the work package results of the first year and to learn from good experiences with respect to an intended elaboration of improved procedures a Border Crossing WorkshopBorder Crossing WorkshopBorder Crossing WorkshopBorder Crossing Workshop has been organised on 28/29 November 2007 in Wien and Hegyeshalom.

This more theoretical part was supplemented by an on-site visit of the border crossing point Hegyeshalom between Aus-tria and Hungary. It has been realised, that for some freight trains, passing this border, advanced border procedures are

already in place, resulting in very short stopping times of less than 15 minutes. One example is the RoLa-train Wels-Szeged, carrying for instance semi-trailer-combinations of the CREAM partner Balnak.

1st General Assembly CREAM 14 January 2008 Frankfurt/Germany

The easy way

The CREAM PartnersThe CREAM PartnersThe CREAM PartnersThe CREAM Partners

Website / Customer ServiceWebsite / Customer ServiceWebsite / Customer ServiceWebsite / Customer Service

Besides the possibility to get information about the CREAM project directly from the Management or via the newsletters, the CREAM website www.creamwww.creamwww.creamwww.cream----project.euproject.euproject.euproject.eu will be updated regularly with the most re-cent information about the project.

General information from the ConsortiumGeneral information from the ConsortiumGeneral information from the ConsortiumGeneral information from the Consortium

The organisational development on the European rail-way market partly enforced by the railway packages and their requirements, also led to changes in the CREAM consortium.

The former integrated railway “PE Macedonian Rail-PE Macedonian Rail-PE Macedonian Rail-PE Macedonian Rail-wayswayswaysways” was transferred into two independent compa-nies: “PE Macedonian Railways InfrastructurePE Macedonian Railways InfrastructurePE Macedonian Railways InfrastructurePE Macedonian Railways Infrastructure” and ”Macedonian Railways Transportation JSCMacedonian Railways Transportation JSCMacedonian Railways Transportation JSCMacedonian Railways Transportation JSC”. Whereas only PE Macedonian Railways Infrastructure is the legal successor within the CREAM consortium, practically experts from both companies are integrated in the pro-ject work.

Also other CREAM partners had to inform the project management about administrative and legal changes within the first project year without any direct influ-ence on the project work.

Besides these changes, the composition of the consor-tium has changed slightly in comparison to the official project start in January 2007.

ZS ZS ZS ZS –––– Serbian Railways Serbian Railways Serbian Railways Serbian Railways have not started their official project activities. Instead they opted to cooperate with the CREAM partner companies for dedicated tasks.

Another change in the planned project work plan was enforced by the shift of responsibilities from Railion Railion Railion Railion Nederland Nederland Nederland Nederland to Railion DeutschlandRailion DeutschlandRailion DeutschlandRailion Deutschland. Having contributed for 12 months to the basic tasks of the work package RA 5.1, which deals with the implementation of the Betuweline, the remaining tasks would not justify a continuation of a direct project involvement with all administrative duties. Therefore Railion Nederland Railion Nederland Railion Nederland Railion Nederland left the consortium with effect of 31 December 2007 and Railion Deutschland took over the responsibility for their tasks.

Review General Assembly January 2008Review General Assembly January 2008Review General Assembly January 2008Review General Assembly January 2008

The General Assembly of the CREAM project has been ini-tiated to bring together high level representatives of the European Commission, CREAM consortium members, as-sociated partners of the project, selected customers and cooperation partners to review jointly the achievements of the project.

On 14 January 2008 the first General Assembly took place in Frankfurt/Main. In the first part presentations were given on the different project activities by the respective work package leaders, describing approach and results of their activities.

The second part of this event was intended to get a feed-back from the audience on the already reached achieve-ments and to pick up suggestions and requirements for the further project work.

The customer of Railion for the Copper-Anode-Train Pirdop-Olen CumerioCumerioCumerioCumerio presented their business activities with focus on the problems and their specific require-ments for rail services. They pointed out, that they use rail, even though they are not totally satisfied with the currently reached performance.

Their clear message to the CREAM partners was:

If rail freight services reach a good quality at a competi-If rail freight services reach a good quality at a competi-If rail freight services reach a good quality at a competi-If rail freight services reach a good quality at a competi-tive price, Cumerio is willing to shift significantly more tive price, Cumerio is willing to shift significantly more tive price, Cumerio is willing to shift significantly more tive price, Cumerio is willing to shift significantly more volumes to rail!volumes to rail!volumes to rail!volumes to rail! All railways partners assured that they are aware of the problems and that they see CREAM as the platform to realise the respective improvements.

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