Another year almost over, another Railway Undertakings and Terminal Advisory Groups successfully convened at Baltic-Adriatic Railway Freight Corridor!

As in 2020, we could not meet in person, but again we found a way to make the most of this occasion.

This year’s goal was to reflect all together on the way the railway freight industry has reacted during the pandemic crisis (can we speak of resilience?) and what lessons we can learn for the future, both in terms of mistakes not to repeat and, most of all, of best practices that could help us to seize the opportunities that the current European situation presents us (Green Deal, Recovery Plan for Europe …)

For this reason, the title of our day was “RAILsilience from fiercely facing the crisis to seizing new opportunities”

After the welcomes from the Chairpersons of the Executive and Management Board/General Assembly of the RFC Baltic-Adriatic, Anka Rojs and Jaroslaw Majchrzak, the launching of the day was given by an introductory speech by the guest from DGMove, Mr. Vassil Zhivkov, who illustrated the main policy actions that the EU Commission has in the pipeline in the next month. This was very illuminating to highlight the strategic importance of the moment.

Then, a keynote speech by the Secretary General of the Venice Port Authority, Antonella Scardino followed. The presentation gave an interesting insight not only on the present commercial and strategic importance of the Port of Venice but most of all on its potentialities for what concerns the international traffics, which of course become potentialities for the rail freight traffic and the Baltic-Adriatic RFC in particular.

A presentation session followed.

First, the Permanent Management Office Managers of the Baltic-Adriatic RFC presented selected main achievements of the RFC in 2021:

• Simona Di Loreto, Executive Manager, under the idea of “Co-creating for the future”, presented the outcomes of the common RFCs project “International Coordination in TTR”;
• Petra Komáromyová, Corridor Infrastructure Manager, under the idea of “Promoting through networking” presented the RFCs Network and Batic-Adriatic’s initiatives for the Year of Rail
• Alessandro Turconi, C-OSS Manager, under the idea of “Innovative approach to timetabling”, presented the main findings of the Baltic-Adriatic “Capacity Study”

The RAG speaker could not participate in the meeting, but the Railway Undertakings contributed with a very interesting presentation by Andreas Lipka (DB Cargo AG) and Andrea Marco Penso (DB Cargo International) on the „European Freight Digital Automatic Coupling Delivery Programme (EDDP)“ which is carried out under the umbrella of Shift2Rail.

Finally, the Chairpersons of the Executive and Management Board/General Assembly of the RFC Baltic-Adriatic presented the so-called “Strategy Paper”, which is still work in progress document, the aim of which is to define the strategy of the Baltic-Adriatic RFC for the medium/long term, its implementation method and its monitoring tools. This presentation was aimed, among others, to collect the feedback of the other stakeholders on the work that the BAC is doing on its strategy.

An interactive session followed. The most important moment was the panel discussion and exchange of ideas on the topic of the idea. The panel was moderated by Simona Di Loreto and the panellist were Vassil Zhivkov and Camille Dachicourt (Austrian Ministry of Transport).

In addition, a quiz on the knowledge of the Corridor was submitted (it was possible to participate online). Three participants will receive their prizes for getting the three highest score in the shortest time.

The agenda can be downloaded here. Meeting’s documents can be provided under request: contacts

Are you curious to check if you know the Corridor Baltic-Adriatic as well as you should?

Why don’t you challenge yourself with our quiz? No prizes for you this time, sorry … but you might discover something you do not know yet!