In November of 2019, at the initiative of the CEOs of three railway infrastructure managers belonging to the ScanMed rail freight corridor (RFI, OeBB Infrastruktur, and DB Netz), a Task Force, aimed at improving the quality of freight transport over the Munich - Verona axis and to facilitate the shift of freight traffic flows towards rail in general and towards combined transport in particular, was established.

The Task Force’s activities have a short/medium term time horizon, which corresponds to the period before the Brenner Base Tunnel (BBT) becomes operational.

The Task Force has identified the following actions to be carried out in support of rail traffic over the axis:

• development of an integrated and holistic traffic management concept along the Brenner Axis that will allow the infrastructure managers to better coordinate the circulation of international trains, optimizing their performance.
• improvement of capacity management and connectivity with the terminals along the Brenner Axis.

In 2020, the Task Force established a unified communication procedure between the three infrastructure managers for the management of railway operations under regular and abnormal conditions.

This procedure entails:

a) the integration of exceptional transport information within the daily Brenner program (without prejudice to the formal documentation of the presence of exceptional transport within the trains’ composition, in compliance with the current legislation);

b) the establishment of quality indicators for periodic quality assessments/performance meetings; 

c) a better and more frequent use of the RNE TIS (Train Information System) in collaboration with RNE, for international quality measurement, in order to monitor the trains and establish any additional requirements;

d) the definition and description of the communication flow between the Munich, Innsbruck, and Verona traffic control centres and the Brenner station; 

e) the improvement of the pre-announcement of the list of cars/train composition data, limiting changes to the train number.

In 2021, the Task Force continued its activities with the launch of a Pilot Project for the implementation of some of the measures described above.

The following new goals, some of which are already in place, have been identified for the future:

• fine-tuning of the pilot phase with "Performance Meetings" attended by the infrastructure managers on a weekly/bi-weekly basis;
• involvement of railway undertakings for the determination and implementation of joint actions;
• identification of possible joint actions with the terminals operating along the axis;
• initiation of a dialogue with road transport operators for joint rail-road activities, for "combined transport" purposes.