Reducing the negative impact of Temporary Capacity Restrictions

Successfully reaching the ambitious goals of the European Green Deal and its Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy (SSMS) requires a substantial shift of traffic onto the railways. To cope with this additional traffic, a robust rail infrastructure and sufficient rail capacity is needed. Existing rail infrastructure must be maintained and upgraded, while missing links must be built. A proper rail infrastructure, in turn, requires works and construction sites. Consequently, Temporary Capacity Restrictions (TCRs) on the rail network are unavoidable, but need to be managed in a way so that their negative impact on rail services is minimised.

Three main points are needed to reduce the negative impact of TCRs: a full implementation of existing rules, a better international coordination of TCRs by implementing Timetabling and Capacity Redesign (TTR) and Digital Capacity Management (DCM), as well as multi-annual financing of infrastructure managers.

Read more in our full paper below.