Undertakings from different rail market segments have different abilities to anticipate their railway infrastructure capacity needs. Some freight service providers, in particular, might not be able to identify their capacity needs in time in order for those needs to be included in the working timetable, which is in the annual plan for train and rolling-stock movements, and those needs might not fit its annual schedule. Therefore, infrastructure managers should be able to offer capacity of sufficient quality and quantity also for rail services that have unstable demand, are organised on relatively short notice, include more than a single train run, and could run repeatedly for a period of time that does not coincide with the duration of the working timetable period. For that purpose, it should be possible to reserve capacity for train paths that can then be allocated at short notice.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
