InnoTrack is a Europe wide initiative that brings together rail infrastructure managers (IM) and industry suppliers, the two major players in the rail industry, to concentrate on the research issues that will contribute to the reduction of rail infrastructure Life Cycle Cost (LCC).

The EC White paper on Sustainable Transport calls for rail operators to double passenger traffic & triple freight traffic by 2020 and reduce LCC by 30%. The European Railway Business Scenario 2020 also calls for railways to capture 15% of freight & 12% of the passenger market. The InnoTrack project is supported by funding under the E.U. research 6th Framework project and is co-ordinated and disseminated by the International Union of Railways.

Balfour Beatty is an active participant in the project. Our Embedded Rail System is being evaluated by InnoTrack against the demands described above. Working with Loughborough University and the Technical University in Munich we have been proving the concept through various advanced tests. The technical issues are not the only areas we have been working on, our system will deliver the 30% LCC saving the EU desire. We are working to a tight programme and this should be published in the later half of this year.

Our initial work in the technical and LCC areas have been so promising that we are now actively planning a significant installation of our system in Germany.