SHIFT2RAIL
Shift2Rail is a Joint Undertaking (JU) funded by the European Commission (via the Horizon 2020 programme) and by main railway stakeholders. The initiative is aimed at enhancing research activities in the railway sector.
Shift2Rail will foster the introduction of better trains to the market (quieter, more comfortable, more reliable, etc.), which will operate on an innovative rail network infrastructure reliably from the first day of service introduction, at a lower life-cycle cost, with more capacity to cope with growing passenger and freight mobility demand. All this will be developed by European companies, thereby increasing their competitiveness in the global marketplace.
Shift2Rail is organised according to five Innovation Programmes (IPs), addressing the main railway challenges in specific areas (Rolling Stock, Control & Command, Infrastructure, IT services and Freight). You can read more about these five IPs in Shift2Rail's Annual Work Programme.
The work conducted within the five IPs will be supported by cross-cutting activities (CCAs). The CCAs will ensure that research and innovation activities within the different IPs are closely aligned in terms of their objectives and requirements, as well as in terms of the methodologies to be used for evaluating and assessing the expected impacts.
The Shift2MaaS project falls under the fourth Innovation Programme from Shift2Rail, which addresses the subject of IT Solutions for Attractive Railway Services.
IP4
This part of the Shift2Rail Programme adopts a traveller-centred approach in order to allow a full seamless multimodal travel experience: customers will be able to easily plan and purchase door-to-door journeys, as well as being assisted before, during and after their journey.
Improved information technology, management and exploitation, and cross-industry collaboration will help to provide passengers with smart and personalised services for journey information and ticket purchase, together with entertainment and communication services.
In order to enable such services, IP4 will develop an Interoperability Framework (IF): tools and technologies that will allow data exchange among different actors of the transport ecosystem, facilitating interoperability among new and existing systems.
SHIFT2MAAS IN IP4
The role of Shift2MaaS in IP4 is to integrate all the outputs of other IP4 activities in one Technological Demonstrator (TD). A TD can be described as one element of an application or technology: for example a booking-system.
IP4 is organised around six Technology Demonstrators (TDs): Interoperability Framework (TD4.1), Travel Shopping (TD4.2), Booking & Ticketing (TD4.3), Trip-tracker (TD4.4), Travel Companion (TD4.5), and Business Analytics (TD4.6). All of these TDs focus on one element of providing a travel application that should enable seamless passenger experience. The TDs have clear and non-overlapping objectives.
Shift2MaaS will integrate all aforementioned TDs into a 7th one (TD4.7), and specifically focus on the ‘non-technical’ elements of the TDs (such as regulation, integration with existing systems, etc.). The integration of the technical elements of the TDs (such as shopping functionalities, booking systems, etc.) will be performed by the Shift2Rail project COHESIVE.
