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| MAss transit Rail Initiative for Europe - MARIE | |
| What is MARIE? | |
| MARIE was organised by UITP and UNIFE, the European Association of Railway Industries, and is supported by the EU Commission. It works to achieve greater harmonisation in terms of design, terms and conditions of supply contracts, life cycle costs and models and the development of new financing techniques for all mass transit rail systems leading to lowering costs and increasing the competitiveness of this sector of the industry. | |
| Why is MARIE important? | |
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Mass
transit and suburban railways are two areas where products are still
developed on an individual basis. Local regulations and specifications
for safety and performance mean short production runs and high design
development costs. Rolling stock, therefore, can only be used by
that city alone and leading to extremely high levels of investment
and risk for individual towns and cities. This is an unsustainable
situation both for the authorities and operators.
This initiative is exploring solutions to these problems on a Europe wide basis and to respond to today's climate of reduced levels of public finance and the industry's needs of cutting costs of production by introducing some levels of harmonisation to these issues. This conference deals specifically with innovative methods of financing for urban mass rail projects. The situation today in rail is unique in the transport field. In the air and road sectors there is deregulation, international policies, standard production and deregulation. This has lead to a concentration of manufacturers providing multipurpose products, but this is not yet the case in the rail industry with cities ordering individual products with national or even local specifications as part of the image of their city. |
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| Contact | |
| For more information, please e-mail to studies@uitp.com. | |