The Capacity Regulation will change how Applicants plan and request international capacity, including a strong shift towards digitalisation.

Over 65 participants from Railway Undertakings, Applicant associations and Infrastructure Managers joined RNE’s online webinar on Digital Capacity Management (DCM) for Applicants on 7 October 2026 to find out what this means in practice.

The webinar’s message was clear: Chapter II of Regulation (EU) 2026/1184 introduces harmonised workflows. Only when IMs and Applicants connect through a common, federated DCM platform do they become one seamless European process. Participants learned which DCM tools they will work with, how the workflows will support them, and which operational and IT preparations they should begin now. Applicant input helped shape the programme: Ahead of the event, Applicants identified and suggested the topics they most wanted the webinar to address.

The webinar was led by Josef Zitzler, Deputy Head of Capacity Management and Team Leader of Capacity Management Implementation, and Andras Till, Deputy to the CIO and Team Leader Capacity Management IT.

Topics covered during the webinar

In his opening statement, RNE Deputy Secretary General and CIO Harald Reisinger, described Digital Capacity Management as a key enabler for implementing the Capacity Regulation as a sector, with Infrastructure Managers and Applicants working hand in hand. He called on Applicants to get actively involved, both in the stakeholder consultation on the European Frameworks starting in late 2026 and in the technical implementation.

The webinar then covered four main areas:

• The Capacity Regulation, the Telematics Technical Specification for Interoperability (TSI) and DCM: their purpose, expected benefits, and legal and implementation timelines.
• DCM components: the Capacity Planning Tool (CPT) for strategic capacity planning and Temporary Capacity Restrictions, the Path Coordination System (PCS) for path requests and allocation, and the interfaces connecting national systems.
• Workflows relevant to Applicants, explored through two parallel moderated breakout rooms: one on CPT and one on PCS, both including interfaces.
• Stakeholder involvement through the DCM Stakeholder Group and the CPT and PCS User Groups.

Stakeholder input

During the breakout room and the Q&A sessions, the RNE team addressed around ten questions in the plenary alone, plus many more in the two breakout rooms and collected feedback from Applicants on both tools.

Discussions focused in particular on national and central implementation timelines and avoiding national “dialects” of the Telematics TSI. In the breakout rooms, participants explored data submission and connectivity in CPT and saw a live demonstration of the PCS request and offer workflow.

Next steps

The feedback gathered during the webinar will be considered in the further development of the DCM tools and in the support that RNE and IMs provide to Applicants. The sector is working towards full implementation of the new processes for the timetable period 2031. The next milestone is the launch of the Capacity Planning Tool on 19 October 2026, with all currently planned functionalities available from January 2027.

As Network Coordinator, RNE remains the single point of contact for questions and support concerning DCM’s central IT platforms, while IMs will be the first address for the corresponding national systems.

Watch the webinar recording and revisit the key discussions.

RNE thanks all participants who contributed to the webinar by asking questions and sharing their observations.