{"id":315482,"date":"2025-11-12T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T10:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=67284"},"modified":"2025-11-12T20:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T10:33:09","slug":"data-of-the-week-the-challenges-facing-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=315482","title":{"rendered":"Data of the week: The challenges facing ERA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has evaluated performance of the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA). While positive on the whole, the Commission identified some points where ERA has failed to meet expectations. The agency is not entirely to blame.<\/strong>
\n<\/span>The European Commission characterised the work of ERA as being \u201crelevant\u201d for the rail sector, helping to bring closer the much-desired Single European Railway Area (SERA) and boosting its safety.<\/p>\n

Yet, ERA has not been able to meet expectations set for the agency in 2013. Notably, the Commission says, the agency\u2019s responsibility to issue vehicle authorisations has demanded so much of its capacity that it has fallen short of delivering on other, policy-related tasks. Those include TSI development, the \u201ccleaning up\u201d of redundant national rules and monitoring National Safety Authorities (NSAs) and Notified Bodies (NoBos).<\/p>\n

Due to \u201cmarket trends\u201d and \u201cspecific railway sector business decisions\u201d, the workload for authority tasks was unexpectedly high, and so ERA prioritised those. The figure below shows how ERA\u2019s workload for those tasks grew throughout the years, with vehicle authorisations taking up the vast majority of the demand. Despite the growing workload, ERA has managed to meet all agreed upon deadlines, says the European Commission.<\/p>\n