TRA 2022
From 14 to 17 November, the Transport Research Arena conference took place in Lisbon. Representatives of the European Commission, European research and innovation programmes, research centres and universities attended. Rail research and innovation was represented by Carlo Borghini, executive director of Europe's Rail JU, Giorgio Travaini, head of research programme and Miroslav Haltuf, SRG vice chairman. It covers research for most of the whole rail sector and that is why ERJU was presented at Plenary and Strategic Sessions.
The exhibition area included many interesting stands demonstrating many interesting solutions and concepts. We started at Europe’s Rail stand which of course is the most important place for us at the exhibition area. The Clean Hydrogen JU or had their stand nearby as well. Naturally, many major organisations had their stand there as well, including but not limited to the European Commission, UNIFE, UITP, or ERTRAC. Portugal, Austria and Germany had their own corners with a number their projects and organisations, and the industry and research organisations were well represented as well.
Visitors had also the opportunity to visit a passenger train set near the congress centre and to discover the Lisbon's public transport, the city’s culture and sights.
At the closing ceremony the symbolic baton for the next TRA 2024 was passed to Ireland. We are looking forward to visiting Dublin in 2024!
Invited Session
Mr Haltuf, the ERJU SRG vice-Chairman was moderating one of the invited sessions – Invited Session 11 - "Motivating companies, academia and research organizations to participate in EU research". This session demonstrated the need to exploit synergies in railway research and innovation, and in a dynamic discussion it also outlined the direction of European railway research should take in the future to make rail more attractive transport sector for young researchers. To reach this challenge contributed Giorgio Travaini (ERJU Head of Research Programme), Daniel Lopour from EUSPA, Prof. Tatiana Molková (University of Pardubice), Matthias Prandstetter (AIT, Austria) and Petr Buchníček (OLTIS Group, Czech SME) with their views and opinions.
Full gallery
