ELETA – Electronic Exchange of ETA information – is a co-financed project under Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), launched in September 2017. Coordinated by Koninklijk Nederlands Vervoer (KNV) with the support of the International Union for Road-Rail Combined Transport (UIRR), the project will demonstrate the advantages of exchanging the Estimated Time of Arrival data within the rail supply chain management.
The rail sector agreed to provide information on ETA to their contract partners, including terminals and intermodal operators under the protection of confidentiality clauses. ELETA should encourage and facilitate the efforts from the rail sector, Member States and the European institutions to overcome legal, operational and technical obstacles in the electronic exchange of ETA information.
As informed by the UIRR last week at the ESC meeting, the ELETA project identifies two main challenges in the exchange of Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) data in the rail supply chain management. The first concerns the integration of infrastructure-related data into existing systems, in particular the information related to the terminals. The second challenge is to find out the right architecture of the ETA ecosystem and the choice of the adequate ETA methodology. The prototype will be tested and validated on twelve pre-defined cross-border services.
Currently, the project partners are liaising with terminals, infrastructure managers, and railway undertakings to continue the analysis of the current situation. A survey of legal conditions in tracking data exchange was organised and found no legal obstacles so far. To design the best possible demonstration for the ETA data exchange, UIRR has started to compile all possible systems, interfaces and standards that could be of interest to the ELETA project.
Read more about the ELETA project here.