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EU-Rail October 2026 Newsletter
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Flagship Area 5
Sustainable Competitive Digital Green Rail Freight Services
Enhancing the attractiveness and competitiveness of rail freight will also increase the greening of European logistic and its resilience, by improving capacity, cross-border operations, and multimodal customer services. An essential enabler is the Digital Automatic Coupler (DAC) together with the implementation of full digital rail freight train and integrated / seamless rail freight operations.
FP5, as the first project being implemented under FA5, follows two working streams:
- WS1: full digital Freight Train Operations with DAC as an enabler
- WS2: Seamless Freight with easy access and reliable (intermodal) transport service offering digital solutions
Projects in this Flagship Area
Flagship Area 5 Project - DACtiVate
Following the path paved by the Shift2Rail program and FP5-TRANS4M-R project, using the strength of Europe’s Rail, FP5-DACtiVate will consequently boost innovation for the European rail freight sector by setting the projects high-level objectives by preparing the wide deployment of DAC in Europe, that are linked to technical objectives (TO).
Flagship Area 5 Project - TRANS4M-R
FP5-TRANS4M-R’s overall goal is to establish rail freight as the backbone of a low-emission, resilient European logistics chain which fulfills end-user requirements to full satisfaction. Two technological clusters, ‘Full Digital Freight Train Operation (FDFTO)’ and ‘Seamless Freight Operation’, will develop, validate and demonstrate FP5-TRANS4M-R technologies, in line with an integrated cross-sector systemic approach. Integrating Digital Automatic Coupler (DAC) enabled solutions with software defined systems and digital rail services will ensure increased capacity, higher throughput and swifter transportation.