The original plan was to hold our annual EPF conference in Strasbourg in June 2020. The programme and all necessary clarifications had been largely arranged by EPF’s French member FNAUT. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, we had to postpone until 2021. And again Corona forced us to cancel our event and replace it for the first time with an online conference. On 26.6.21, more than 60 participants met virtually to take a look at the European Year of Rail from the passenger’s point of view.

The EPF conference also included a workshop on Shift2Rail’s Customer Experience model. Which customer experience variables are most important from the passengers’ point of view, and how might priorities be different when considering various use cases (high-speed, regional or urban rail)? Anja Schmotz, PRO BAHN Fahrgastverband, talked about quality standards for European railway connections. Hans Leister, founding member of the initiative “Deutschlandtakt” presented the current state of planning and implementation and gave an outlook on a European “Taktsystem”. Kristian Schmidt, DG MOVE, explained the Commission’s main agenda points to boost the use of railways and highlighted focus topics for passengers.

The presentations can be downloaded here. We are currently planning the next EPF-conference in June 2022 in Copenhagen, further online-meetings are under evaluation.