On 16 October 2023, RNE hosted an online workshop for Infrastructure Managers (IMs) and Railway Undertakings (RUs) to present, discuss and recap the Capacity Models, which have been published for TT 2025 in ECMT earlier this year. The second part of the workshop was dedicated to the piloting activities of the Capacity Needs Announcement (CNA) process for TT 2026.
It was emphasized that the known concept of gradual implementation of TTR will be reflected in the next iteration of Capacity Models for TT 2026, which are expected to increase in scope and network coverage. A geographic overview of lines and sections covered in TT 2026 Models will be considered based on some participants’ suggestions.
A similar approach applies to CNAs, as this tool for market involvement was firstly introduced and tested for TT 2025. Generally, the CNAs represent a structured way of market input/market involvement. Initial requirements for this have been laid down in the SERA Directive which will gain even more importance with the EU Commission’s draft regulation on Capacity Management.
The CNA pilot for TT 2026 is a rescoped (new and changing needs, quality instead of quantity) continuation of the TT 2025 piloting exercise with a clear focus on testing of and familiarizing with the relevant IT tool, namely ECMT (European Capacity Management Tool). Given the still ongoing finetuning of the CNA process as such, the technical consideration of CNAs for Capacity Models by Infrastructure Managers will be optional for TT 2026, respectively depending on individual IM resources and capabilities. IMs are strongly encouraged by RNE to undertake additional CNA pilot activities for TT 2026, in order to provide a meaningful tool for real life use cases (such as the EC Passenger Pilots of which many represent new and changing capacity needs for TT 2026).
ECMT is now open to receive CNAs by Applicants until 10 December 2023.
In case you need technical assistance regarding ECMT, please reach out to support.ecmt@rne.eu.
The slides presented during the workshop, and the overview on the geographic scope of additional IM activities can be found below.
To help you to submit a CNA in ECMT, we prepared some short explanatory videos on CNA import via the GUI in ECMT and by using the excel upload template.