The European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) is the bedrock of the vision for a “Single European Rail Area” (SERA). ERTMS is meant to provide interoperability between the many national railways of European member states in the areas of train control, through the European Train Control System ETCS, voice and data radio, through GSM-R, and the Future Rail Mobile Communication System FRMCS, and Automatic Train Operation.

What looks like a most prudent and meaningful initiative that should be implemented as swiftly as possible, has been dragging along for the last 25 years, and today is nowhere near what it was planned and required to be.

The European Union has defined a “core network” of nearly 64,000 kilometres which one should think to have priority for the realisation of the interoperable SERA. The TEN-T guideline for the Trans-European Network set a deadline for that core network to be fitted with ERTMS by 2030. However, the recently published ERTMS Work Plan reported that by the end of 2024 only 17% of that core network had ETCS in operation. By 2030 that number was expected to go up to 51%, albeit with some doubts whether such increase will be achievable.

Even if that forecast was achieved, still only half of the core network would be ETCS-fitted by the TEN-T deadline of 2030. If that sounds like a crisis, that’s because it is one. To say that the rollout of ERTMS in Europe is slower than planned is a contender for the 2026 understatement of the year award, if such award existed.

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