For the future Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking to be successful, the innovations stemming from its Master Plan must adhere to the needs of railway stakeholders and final users. Ben@Rail contributes to the success of the new Undertaking by applying a scientifically proven methodology to quantify the efficacy of EU-funded R&I activities. To reach this objective, Ben@Rail will provide evidence-based research to assess the extent to which the foreseen innovations of Shift2Rail and its successor respond to clear societal cases and stakeholders’ and users’ expectations. To achieve this, Ben@Rail, in close cooperation with the European Rail Research Advisory Council (ERRAC), will develop a top-down analysis grounded on two elements. On the one side, the requirements of the rail sector stakeholders vis a vis EU-funded research are identified. On the other side, the sector’s strategic documents are reviewed and analysed in light of the stakeholders’ expected benefits and the wider societal challenges to extract objectives, key technical concepts and development areas that will affect and shape the Railway System of the future. The resulting analysis will assess the adherence of EU-funded R&I activities to the stakeholders’ requirements, thus evaluating the expected outcomes of the future new Joint Undertaking Master Plan. Ben@Rail will develop a scientific, innovative framework for the evaluation of EU-funded projects based on the stakeholders’ requirements. One of the strengths of this framework relies on its possible application in other sectors to comprehensively investigate future funding R&I programmes. Ben@Rail will benefit from a consortium composed of three renowned scientific centres in the field of rail research, committed to the mentioned actions and towards the maximisation of the project’s impacts by communicating and promoting its outcomes to the scientific community, rail stakeholders and policymakers.

An efficient and high-quality transport infrastructure is a fundamental requirement for the connectivity of people and goods in Europe and basis for economic growth, competitiveness and territorial cohesion. In general, the transport network in Europe is of a high standard but is still fragmented regarding the geographical distribution and the transport modes. In recent years, first networking activities and exchange of strategic programmes among the stakeholders of the four transport modes – road, rail, water and air – can be noticed but still a mono-modal, mono-disciplinary culture exists. In the light of the future challenges, e.g. increasing transport demand, ageing infrastructure, scarcity of natural resources, changing climatic conditions, it is inevitable to strengthen the collaboration of the single transport modes in order to create an improved future integrated and functioning transport system for Europe, despite of limited financial resources of the owners of the transport network. The FOX project aims to develop a highly efficient and effective cross-modal R&D environment and culture which meets the demanding requirements of the transport and connectivity. Based on already existing programmes and agendas related to the aspects of co-modal transport research, the FOX project will identify common needs and innovative techniques in the areas of construction, maintenance, inspection, and recycling & reuse of transport infrastructure. This will be reached by the involvement of all stakeholders (owners, researchers, and industry) of the four transport modes in a phased approach: Starting with the determination of the state-of-the-art in research and practice, in the next step the most promising practices and ideas will be identified. By mapping the common needs, the final aim is to establish a cross-modal Working Group to develop a roadmap for the whole transport sector and set the agenda for further improvement of cross-modal research development innovation.