Formulation of a roadmap towards the enhancement of international rail passenger transport - The South East Europe example

No strangers to the phenomenon of rail transport decline, related authorities responsible for managing the sector have lately turned their attention to exploring ways for enhancing its position in the transportation market. In the quest for identifying optimal measures that will contribute to its overall improvement, they find themselves presented with a series of options, yet have no assurances that their choices will best deal with the challenges. Starting from a detailed desktop and literature review, in order to create a consolidated knowledge base on the challenges currently faced by rail transport, and focusing on South East Europe, this paper proposes a methodological approach for the formulation of roadmaps regarding the enhancement rail passenger transport. The paper conducts a clustering of reported measures in content structures (e.g. technical options, organizational and decision making structures, etc.) and assesses them in terms of their contribution to the enhancement of rail transport. These assessments build towards the formulation of roadmaps of actions, measures, policies and strategies that should be taken to strengthen the future of rail passenger transport. The evaluation is conducted via an expert group survey, covering multiple sectors and disciplines (academia, research, industry, government). Findings are formulated in the form of roadmaps that can serve as a useful tool and basis for an improved decision-making approach for different end-users to address rail transport decline.