The current global climate crisis and ongoing shift towards autonomous transport necessitate sustainable and passenger-centric public transport solutions. The goal of OptiPEx is to enhance of sense of comfort and safety of the passengers as well as the security and ease of travelling by co-creating ethical and passenger-aware public transport services together with specific target user groups, such as wheelchair users, passengers with large objects, fragile passengers with limited mobility, tourists and students. To achieve this, OptiPex is built on three fundamental development pillars: measurement, analytics and interaction. OptiPEx partners will develop perception technologies to measure passenger behaviour and situations. Trustworthy analytics is essential in recognising real-time passenger experiences and situations, enabling interaction with services and vehicles. Moreover, OptiPEx partners will develop adaptive and interactive vehicle technologies and digital services in collaboration with target groups and suitable for various public transport modes. These services will optimise the onboard experience, promoting safety, inclusiveness and trust. Ultimately improved passenger satisfaction will drive the adoption of automated public transport technologies and improve the sustainability of mobility services via contribution to the modal shift. A consortium consisting of 3 research organisations, 6 industry members and 2 SMEs will validate the developed solutions together with target groups and other stakeholders in three living labs. The consortium has leading expertise in human behaviour, user-centric design, vehicle technologies, modelling and data analysis, and adaptive and interactive services. The successful adoption of OptiPEx results will be facilitated by efficient dissemination, communication, and exploitation activities in collaboration with the Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM) partnership.

The establishment of good governance will effectively secure the confidence of the industry to use the Interoperability Framework (IF) semantic technologies that will be established under the IP4 Shift2Rail program. The objective of the Governance of the IF for Rail and Intermodal Mobility (GoF4R) project is to define sustainable governance for the IF that will create the right conditions to introduce seamless mobility services and foster the development of multi-modal travel services. GoF4R will help to overcome obstacles currently impeding development of market innovation by fostering a large acceptance of the “semantic web for transportation.” The objectives will be achieved through a partnership of specialist participants including research institutions, a major European rail operator, industry associations representing the passenger and multi-modal transport sectors and public transportation authorities. Participants, who are also involved in the consortium of designers for the IF, will focus on the establishment of sustainable governance that will promote community confidence. The governance structure will create the basis for long term stability and controlled future evolution of the IF, promoting industry confidence so that it is attractive to invest in future products and services. The project encompasses all current and future stakeholders who will exploit the IF as described in the Shift2Rail Multi Annual Action Plan, contributing to the realisation of a distributed semantic “web of transport” integrating the TAP-TSI specifications as one of its elements. The governance models proposed in GoF4R will assure the interests of European travellers by fostering market uptake by mobility service providers. It will facilitate new business opportunities for improved mobility and travel related services and improve the incorporation of new stakeholders in the European arena by removing technological, administrative and economic boundaries.

The Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) will be the 5G worldwide standard for railway operational communications, conforming to European regulation as well as responding to the needs and obligations of rail organisations outside of Europe. The work on functional & technical requirements, specification & standardisation in 3GPP as well as regarding harmonised spectrum solutions is currently led by UIC, in cooperation with the whole railway sector. A major challenge is the update by European Railway Agency of the Technical Specifications for Interoperability of Control Command and Signalling (CCS TSI) by the end of 2022 with a full description of FRMCS with respect to interoperability functions. Therefore, the 5GRAIL project aims to verify the first set of FRMCS specifications and standards (FRMCS V1) by developing and testing prototypes of the FRMCS ecosystem. The validation of the latest available railway-relevant 5G specifications will be achieved through cross-border emulation trials covering significant portions of railway operational communication requirements and including the core technological innovations for rail expected from 5G release 16 and pre-release 17. The project will first define functional tests and then work towards the development and evaluation of prototypes, for both on-board and infrastructure, including vital (ETCS, ATO) and essential (voice specific services, TCMS and video) applications. Prototypes will be then tested in simulated and real environments, with pilots in labs and in the field rolled out in various European sites (France, Hungary and Germany), to ensure compliancy and validation for FRMCS specifications, standards and performance, and consequently guarantee the time to market for FRMCS deployments, planned for 2025 as per European timeline. 5GRAIL will finally deliver test report conclusions to potentially update FRMCS V1 specifications and to identify technical constraints related to implementation issues.