26/11/2014 GIFT Final Conference in Budapest

The GIFT project closed its activities with a final conference organized at the end of November in Budapest, Hungary. The event was held in connection to the CEE Futurail 2014 Conference, dedicated to the future of rail transport in Central and East Europe. For this reason, one of the session of the GIFT meeting ran as a part of the CEE Futurail’s programme. In that occasion, representatives of the GIFT consortium had the opportunity to discuss the issues of intermodal transport that by taking into account the different perspectives of the market players. Finally, apart from technical meetings aimed at driving the project to its end, the GIFT final conference hosted also a session in which other major topics were discussed. In this sense, the results of the ground tests carried out on Corridor IV, V, and VII were presented. TRAINOSE as leader of Corridor IV presented the final results which comprised of 12 theoretical but realistic scenaria and two pilot tests. Apparently, in all cases, the intermodal scenaria resulted in lower emissions than the equivalent road scenaria, as modes used in intermodal transport are, generally speaking, more eco-friendly, given that a fair load factor (tons of goods carried per train run) can be achieved. The second TRAINOSE presentation dealt with the “Green Monitoring Platform”. GIFT Monitoring is an Internet-based Platform tool developed for collecting all relevant information regarding the above mentioned project proposals of Corridor IV. This is implemented through relevant “ID-Cards” for each of the proposed projects. The ID-Cards contain available information concerning the current status and future perspective of the projects. The participants also dealt with other technical issues, such as liquefied natural gas and on-line tools to measure the carbon footprint of freight transport operations. The final segment of the meeting was dedicated to wrapping up the main achievements obtained during the project activities and to envisioning how to capitalize on these results in future initiatives and collaborations. For further information, please visit the project’s official web site at: https://www.gift-project.eu/