The organisation European Rail Infrastructure Managers - EIM - has recently appointed a new Secretary General: Marc Falchi, 57, with a vast experience in all parts of the railway business. He has been working with EIM for two years as a senior technical advisor, and held the position of acting Secretary General from September 2004, where Jim Evans retired.
Marc is a civil engineer, with some 25 years experience in the French Railways SNCF. He has also worked 5 years with the French infrastructure manager RFF, as well as AEIF (the European Association for Railway Interoperability), so he certainly knows the railway world.
Marc Falchi is a family man, no doubt about that - with 8 children aged between 24 and 34, whereof 6 of his own, and so far 5 grand children, and 2 more on the route. This is also one of the keys to his success — to have the capacity to adapt to different situations.
He has 2 main leading stars as regards to life (and also business): KISS and TIE. Wondering what that could be? Well, Keep It Simple and Straight, and Take It Easy, of course!
What is EIM? EIM is the Brussels-based lobby organisation for the independent railway infrastructure managers (IM) in Europe, and that means the IMs that are independent of incumbent railway undertakings. EIM has the following members:
· The Spanish Rail Infrastructure Administrator — ADIF, Spain, state-owned company established in 1 January 2005
· Public Agency for Rail Transport - AZP, Slovenia, public company established June 2003
· The Danish National Railway Agency - Banedanmark - BD, Denmark, state-owned company, established 1997
· Banverket - BV, Sweden, state-owned company established 1988
· Eurotunnel, UK and France, private company created in 1986
· The Norwegian National Rail Administration - Jernbaneverket - JBV, Norway, state-owned company established 1996
· Network Rail, UK, guarantee limited company established 1995
· ProRail, The Netherlands, public company established 1995
· REFER, Portugal, public company established 1997
· RFF, France, public company established 1997
· RHK, Finland, public company established 1995
This means that all independent infrastructure managers in Europe, except for the Czech Republic, are EIM members.
The other infrastructure managers are represented by the state owned railway undertakings which they belong to, all members of the CER — Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies.
EIM was established in December 2001 by scission from CER with the wish to put forward the views of the infrastructure managers, in relation with the adoption of the first railway package and in particular directive 2001/14/EC and because it was not possible to express such views through the CER.
The EIM-members manage some 139.000 track km, with more than 58.000 trains on an average daily basis, with a total staff of some 55.000 co-workers. Some 120 railway companies operate trains on their networks.
One of the main working areas of Marc Falchi and EIM is the drafting and promotion of EIM positions, and thereby the harmonisation of the 11 members’ views on legislative proposals and implementations as well as on various technical and economical issues that the EIM are dealing with: safety, interoperability and TSIs, infrastructure charging, performance regime, quality indicators, network development, network use policy, path allocation and network statement, ERTMS implementation, research projects (NewOpera, RIMARE) etc.
Some of these major items will be dealt with by the European Railway Agency, to which EIM is one of the bodies entitled to propose experts for participating at working groups.
As one of the many lobby organisations within the European railway area, to exchange of views, and when possible build common positions with other trade bodies (CER, the Association of European Railway Industries - UNIFE, the European Rail Freight Association - ERFA, the International Association of Public Transport - UITP, the International Union of combined Road-Rail transport companies - UIRR, the European Passengers’ Federation - EPF, the European Federation for Transport and Environment - T&E, etc) and various technical organisations (AEIF, UIC, CEN etc) is also part of the working day.
When looking at the different actors within the railway sector, the infrastructure managers have another main organisation: RailNetEurope (RNE) with office in Vienna, gathering all European infrastructure managers and some non EU IMs.
RNE has been created in particular for tackling the coordination between infrastructure managers as required by directive 2001/14/EC for international freight path allocation. Hence RNE is responsible for European timetabling and in December 2004 RNE launched its first European rail freight timetable. One of the purposes of RNE is to offer in 2006 a full catalogue of paths to the rail operators.
Through its members EIM is capable of forwarding to the EU institutions the concerns, results and studies of interest for RNE, in relation with the implementation of the first and second railway packages.
The integrated infrastructure managers say that the integration of operation and infrastructure management is cost saving, and that the safety is better managed when operation and infrastructure management are integrated in the same organisation.
That is according to Marc Falchi simply not true — just look at where cost, safety and efficiency have recently improved or degraded: belonging to an integrated company is not a relevant criterion.
But what is obvious (standard ISO 9000) is that, everything equal in other respects, risks are lower when the interfaces between various stakes are identified and managed, which is in fact better done when the infrastructure manager is totally separated from any railway undertaking.
EIM is a lobby organisation for the proper railway legislation as well as the implementation of this legislation. There are several themes to work on, in order to emphasis the development and the use of the European rail network from the infrastructure managers’ point of view.
But EIM also goes beyond that and tries to endorse cooperation between the different actors in the European railway industry as a whole. One example is the EIM-EFRTC Conference, 17th March 2005, dealing with the cooperation between the infrastructure managers and their contractors for cost savings in maintaining and building the rail network.
The EIM Board has also decided to strengthen the Brussels office by increasing the staff, and this is now on its way to be completed. Hereby EIM will be reinforced as the organisation promoting the infrastructure managers’ role and positions in the discussions with the different EU institutions and other rail stakeholders in Brussels.
With the new organisation EIM will be in a position to fully tackle the new challenges ahead for the railway business, particularly in connection with the creation of the European Railway Agency that is now well on its way, with a large number of staff already recruited.
