There has taken place the opening ceremony of the largest international rail transport exhibition InnoTrans 2018.
European Commissioner for transport Violeta Bulc, Minister of transport of Germany, Andreas Scheuer; Chairman of the Board of Deutsche Bahn, Richard Lutz; and top managers of the companies Alstom, Bombardier and Siemens were the speakers at the opening ceremony. In the spotlight of the speeches, there were intermodality of transport services, automation, digitalization, CO2 reduction and customer centricity.
On the basis of a large survey of users of rail transport, Commissioner summarized the progress made in the development of the industry in five years. She noted the success and growth of customer satisfaction with quality of services. She noted that, nevertheless, there is still a lot of work. In particular, it is necessary to increase the level of accessibility of transport for people with disabilities, coordination and interaction between different modes of transport, to create intercepting parking areas, to solve the last mile problem, and more.
Andreas Scheuer, Minister of Transport of Germany, emphasized the importance of the development of railway transport in view of the problems facing the country on reduction of emissions in atmosphere of harmful substances.
According to him, the aim is to get the maximum number of people who can refuse to travel by private cars in favour of rail transport as the most environmentally friendly of all. The plan is by 2030 to increase the number of users of the railway by twice . In the same period, Europe intends to reduce noise of rail transport volumes and energy consumption from 3 percent to 8 percent. "We need to give people a sense of joy while travelling on the railways, to make them more attractive to the consumer," said Mr. Scheuer.
Among the key agenda of the InnoTrans 2018 forum is the problem of digitalization of the rail transport. According to Richard Luca, Chairman of the Board Deutsche Bahn, the rail transport "must become part of the unified infrastructure," which will include all public transport, including bicycles and vehicles working by sharing principles. Among the directions in this area, there is being discussed both, digital ticketing, mobile applications in order to find out the schedule,
the introduction of technologies of preventive maintenance, as well as the creation of a unified system of railway management as part of a more complex system. "Zero failures" is another urgent goal alongside with automation of management of transport complexes, according to Lauren Troge, Top Manager of Bombardier. Another interesting idea was expressed by Henri Poupart-Lafarge, a representative of the Alstom, who drew attention to the fact that today, the improvement of environmental indicators and the creation of more flexible systems, capable of responding to users' situational requests at transport 24/7, is more important than increasing the speed of transport.
SkyWay corresponds to the trends, indicated in the opening ceremony of InnoTrans 2018. We have everything that the market demands from the transport of the future, and therefore, there is no doubt that we will take a worthy place in this market, in the same way as the premiere of the high-speed unibus has taken a worthy place among the other 146 world premieres of this large-scale forum.