REIF REIF – Regional infrastructure for railway freight transport – revitalised

Although substantial investments into the TEN-T railway network were realized over the past decades all across Central Europe (CE) there still is the EU-wide trend that rail freight transport dramatically lost market shares, especially in the new member states. This is caused by the fact that in many regions the industries with very big flow of goods (e.g. wood, paper, metal, chemicals etc.) or even entire industrial parks find themselves nowadays often disconnected from the rail network. REIF will reverse the negative trend of reduced freight transport and services in CE-member states by development of coordinated strategies, concepts and management tools which contribute to improve the multimodality of environmentally-friendly freight transport (e.g. rail, river or sea transport).

REIF addresses the need to optimize individual regional transport modes and their combination in multi-modal freight transport chains, with the ultimate goal of changing transport patterns by providing efficient, coordinated services linking all actors of the transport and infrastructure chain.

Multi-modal platforms will be promoted and developed as a potential for consolidating and optimising freight flows and overcoming regional disparities in multi-modal accessibility. This will enhance the efficiency, reliability and quality of greener freight transport modes and services. Such a coordinated approach will pave the way for designing future infrastructure in a sustainable manner and a more effective transportation of goods to and across central European regions.

The REIF approach aims to improve regional freight transport (RFT) systems and services focusing on the accessibility of TEN-T corridor hinterlands to national and transnational transport networks to contribute to take freight off the road and shift it to greener and safer means of transportation.

The main objective of REIF is the promotion of regional rail freight transport as feeder infrastructure supporting rail freight transport along large transport corridors (TEN) in Central Europe by strengthening the political focus on regional rail freight infrastructure and establishment or regional stakeholder cooperation. By doing this, REIF aims at removing regional bottlenecks and upgrading its infrastructure. REIF plans to pave the way for designing and implementing future freight transport infrastructure by strengthening capacities in multimodal logistics management.

REIF contributes to CE specific objective 4.2 by supporting multilevel and transnational cooperation between regional stakeholders in sustaining and developing regional freight transport infrastructure and the mainstreaming of strategies developed into regional plans and concepts.

Project specific objectives are: 1) Improving planning and coordination processes for the upgrade of existing or development of new infrastructure and services for rail transport, 2) Strengthening political focus on regional rail infrastructure for freight transport and 3) Interregional integration of railway networks across borders for better linking-up freight flows off the main corridors.

Besides contributing to the overall objectives of the CE programme and the EU 2020 strategy (reduction of the carbon footprint by strengthening collective transport), REIF will actively support the goals of the EU White Paper on Transport and the Directive 2010/40/EU on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS).

REIF project is funded under the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE.

Total budget in EUR: 2.215.341,50

ERDF in EUR: 1.811.200,65

Duration in months:  36 (1/04/2019-1/04/2022)