The rules and procedures on the management of railway infrastructure capacity should consider and satisfy the needs of all rail market segments in a non-discriminatory way. They should take into account in particular the necessity of long-term stability of available capacity for passenger services, including for services operated under public service obligations, and of short-term flexibility for freight traffic to respond to market demand. Therefore, the process of managing capacity should no longer have a predominantly annual focus but be arranged in three subsequent phases: strategic capacity planning; rail service scheduling and capacity allocation; and adaptation and rescheduling of capacity. The introduction of better defined and structured phases that provide for the possibility of long-term planning and short-term adaptation in capacity management would particularly benefit services that are less easy to plan in advance or are more complex to arrange, such as freight trains and cross-border passenger trains, including night trains.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
