The Electronic exchange of Estimated Time of Arrival Project, co-funded by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union1 is the result of an agreement of the rail sector to provide information on Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) to their contract partners, including terminals and CT operators.

The project – coordinated by UIRR and Koninklijk Nederlands Vervoer (KNV) – brought together UIRR member Combined Transport Operators Hupac, Kombiverkehr, LINEAS, Mercitalia Intermodal, Novatrans and Rail Cargo Operator to demonstrate a solution devised by the IT service providers of the project – HaCon and Synfioo – over 22 relations with the intense support from Rail Net Europe as the main data provider.

The project successfully aided the validation of the algorithms developed to reliably predict the estimated time of arrival of a cross border freight train.  The results were presented at a well-attended conference held in Brussels on November 5, 2019.

The implementation of ELETA results will now begin by several actors with a view to enhance the daily operation of Road-Rail Combined Transport through increasing the accuracy of ETA prediction, as well as to integrate terminals and shunting service providers into the prediction routine.

ELETA activities will not stop with the completion of the project. The consortium bears the support of the European Union to continue with Q-ELETA to devise an industry best practice guideline for an econometric tool to pinpoint where rail freight quality is lost.

ELETA Project Manager, Ad Toet, has stated on the occasion of the final conference that delivered the final project results: “Continued efforts will be exerted to further advance the collaboration between the actors to boost the functioning of the RNE Train Information System (TiS) and also to implement the new features of TAF TSI.”