DURING a Parliamentary meeting on railways, Dutch secretary of state for infrastructure, Mrs. Wilma Mansveld announced that the government is willing to provide funds for the electrification of the Maas Line from Nijmegen to Roermond via Venlo.
THE Dutch cabinet has approved a €2.5bn budget to install ERTMS on all trains by 2022 and on the busiest sections of the national rail network by 2030.
RHINE-RUHR Transport Authority (VRR) announced on April 11 that it has awarded German Rail (DB) subsidiary DB Regio NRW an interim contract to operate the future Rhine-Ruhr Express (RRX) network between December 2016 and December 2018.
WITH less than a year to go before the launch of its MTR Express inter-city services, MTR Corporation subsidiary MTR Nordic submitted a track access application to Swedish infrastructure manager Trafikverket on April 15 for train paths on the Stockholm – Gothenburg line.
RHAETIAN Railway (RhB), Switzerland's largest independently-owned railway, saw a 2.9% increase in passenger traffic last year, according to the company's annual results, which also show freight performance remains below expectations.
INTERNATIONAL high-speed operator Thalys launched a new twice-daily direct service between Amsterdam Central and Lille Europe on April 12.
BREMEN Tramways (BSAG) has announced plans to acquire a fleet of up to 77 LRVs and refurbish up to 62 existing GT8N low-floor trams as part of its demand-driven tram use (Nose) project.
ITALIAN Rail Network (RFI) has refuted claims that it gave Trenitalia a competitive advantage over its open-access high-speed competitor NTV by denying NTV access to Rome Termini station in the centre of the Italian capital.
IRELAND's transport minister Mr Leo Varadkar has warned that the government will not allocate any additional funds to bail out struggling Irish Rail (IE), despite describing the company's financial situation as "very serious."
THE GERMAN state of Saarland published a prior information notice in the Official Journal of the European Union on April 10 for a 15-year contract to operate regional services on electrified routes centred on the cites of Saarbrücken and Trier.
