It is crucial to reduce rail operational costs as well as increasing the reliability of service especially in terms of punctuality. Train doors prove to be a critical element with respect to both maintenance cost and cause of train delays. Door actuator defects are the most common found; especially in older trains where door malfunctions amount to 25%-50% of the rolling stock defects. To overcome this, a consortium led by German SME Hitex, have come together with the aim to rapidly seize the business opportunity presented by commercializing the VA-RCM system. VA-RCM is a highly innovative condition monitoring system based on cutting-edge technology involving advanced vibration analysis techniques. Its unique features will enable accurate assessment of train door actuators as well as targeted feedback on subsystem malfunctions well in advance of their potential occurrence. Train operators and passenger train car manufacturers will benefit from the VA-RCM system by improving the efficiency of train doors and reducing the failure rate or downtime of trains, thus reducing maintenance cost. The consortiums vision is to achieve gross sales of 140 million by 2025; a ROI of 60.68 within the first 4 years of commercialisation; and business growth which will create 1298 new jobs. It is our strong belief that the Fast Track to Innovation Pilot is the ideal financial instrument for us to accelerate the commercialization of VA-RCM.

The IT²RAIL -“Information Technologies for Shift to rail” proposal, first step towards the long term IP4 -“IT for an Attractive Railway” SHIFT²RAIL Innovation Programme, aims at providing a new seamless travel experience, giving access to a complete multimodal travel offer which connects the first and last mile to long distance journeys. This is achieved through the introduction of a ground breaking Technical Enabler based on two concepts: • the traveler is placed at the heart of innovative solutions, accessing all multimodal travel services (shopping, ticketing, and tracking) through its travel-companion. • An open published framework is providing full interoperability whilst limiting impacts on existing systems, without prerequisites for centralized standardization. This Technical Enabler will be completely settled in the context of the SHIFT²RAIL IP4, and IT²RAIL is proposing a reduced approach to the scale of a specified use case without weakening any of the key concepts of IP4, such as the usage of Semantic Web technologies, meta planning on distributed data, travel companion with a protected and secured personal wallet stored in the cloud and including the rights to travel. The use case will be defined as a specific instantiation of our open concepts, and will benefit from a completely scalable architecture fully instantiated in IP4. This approach is addressing all the key challenges of the work program, supporting a complete door-to- door intermodal travel offer and proposing a seamless integration of the very diverse existing and future services for planning, one-stop-shop ticketing, and real-time re-accommodation. Moreover, thanks to an Interoperability framework which insulates travel applications from the standards fragmentation in multimodal transport, IT²RAIL liberates business-model innovations in the market-place, guaranteeing the economic self-sustainability of these e-services in the long-term.

Within IP4 more than 10 projects have created a wide array of technologies that tackles carious aspects of traveller experience. Those technologies tackle the interoperability of Transport Service Providers’ (TSPs) services, travel shopping, booking & ticketing, trip tracking, travel companion technologies and business analytics. Various tools have been tested in various locations around Europe retrieved user feedback and improved upon the feedback. Today, IP4 has a large toolset of proven technologies that need to go to the next level; become ready to be implemented in large scale products. IP4MaaS will assist IP4 projects to demonstrate the technologies at an unprecedented level: 6 different locations in Europe including more than 10 transport operators (Public Transport and Mobility-as-a-Service), authorities and agencies. IP4MaaS will develop the scenarios for the demonstrations and a thorough assessment strategy for the demonstrations that tackles both the performance of the demonstrations as well as the impact of the technologies on users and the environment in urban and suburban setups. IP4MaaS will create strategic plans for the demonstrations that will be updated in two iterations leading to two demonstration phases. Furthermore, the project will provide recommendations regarding the promotion and transferability of the technologies to other locations in Europe. IP4MaaS will organise and monitor one of the largest demonstrations of technologies in European project’s history and expects its findings to be used as a baseline for future demonstrations and testing that involves a diverse group of demo partners.