On 5 and 6 May 2026, the UIC Statistics Steering Committee (SSC) met in Strasbourg, France, at the invitation of the French National Railways (SNCF), to discuss ongoing work related to the harmonisation of railway statistics, data collection processes, railway indicators, and digital tools for railway data management.
The new edition of the Eurostat/International Transport Forum at the OECD (ITF-OECD)/United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Glossary for Transport Statistics has now been published. Several SSC members also contributed to the French and German translations of the rail chapter. Preparations were also launched for the upcoming Eurostat Rail Transport Statistics Expert Group meeting, including discussions on mirror-check statistics for international freight transport and the counting of interoperable railway lines within the Registers of Infrastructure (RINF) framework.
Additionally, a second survey on punctuality and reliability statistics (Table 19) confirmed the absence of harmonised methodologies among infrastructure managers, particularly concerning the measurement of delays, cancelled trains, and freight delivery performance. Further investigations will continue through the analysis of reference documents such as network statements, contingency plans, and resilience measures, before the topic is revisited at the next SSC meeting.
Several explanatory note clarifications and revisions were also agreed upon in order to improve the consistency of railway statistics, notably concerning energy consumption reporting by infrastructure managers and variables related to high-speed infrastructure and operations. Important decisions were also made regarding the revision of high-speed infrastructure statistics, including the deletion of variables with very low response rates and a clarification of the definition of high-speed lines and sections.
The committee also noted a decline in responses to International Railway Statistics data collections and increasing difficulty in obtaining data from certain railway companies in Africa, the Middle East, and South America. Members further discussed the European rail freight market’s reduced coverage and the need to improve the representativeness of UIC statistics, as well as inconsistencies between different UIC datasets and the need to progressively unify data collection processes for statistics, sustainability, safety, and energy databases within a single framework.
On digitalisation and data management, the SSC reviewed the development of Railisa subscriptions and the new availability of API access for external users. They also further discussed railway traffic trends, resilience indicators, and sustainability reporting. A future publication on railway resilience following the COVID-19 pandemic will be prepared.
The next SSC meeting will take place on 6-7 October 2026 in Berlin, hosted by the German Federal Railways (DB), followed by the Statistics Platform Plenary Meeting on 19 November 2026 at the UIC headquarters in Paris.
More information on the meeting can be found on the UIC extranet.
UIC members are invited to keep on providing their data using our online tool at: http://stats.uic.org/.
To download UIC data, please visit Railisa at: http://uic-stats.uic.org/.
For any information concerning the statistics at UIC, please send an email to stat at uic.org.
