Last week NITL welcomed back Juan Carlos Carrasco Gimenez. Juan Carlos previously worked as a visiting researcher at NITL when his work focussed largely on issues of supply chain environmental sustainability. One aspect of this work was concerned specifically with the role of rail freight. Juan Carlos returned last week to present some of the findings from this research to delegates at the Irish Transport Research Network (IRTN) Annual Conference at University College Cork.

IRTN was formed in late 2009 by a group of University based researchers. It aims to promote transport teaching and research and to act as a focus for those involved in these activities in universities and institutions of higher education, government departments and industry on the island of Ireland. It also aims to inform policy and to assist the public and private sectors to plan and develop sustainable multi-modal transport systems using best engineering design, practice and technology solutions.

The paper presented by Juan Carlos was entitled “Rail Freight in the Republic of Ireland” and was co-authored by Juan Carlos, Edward Sweeney of NITL and John Harvey of the DIT’s Department of Transport Engineering. It presented research based on a range of secondary sources, as well as on a series of semi-structured interviews carried out by the authors with current rail freight customers. A focus group comprising rail freight experts was also used to identify possible future scenarios. The paper is available at NITL’s Knowledge Base (see http://nitl.ie/Knowledge_Base_Database/Default.67.html).


                                         Juan Carlos Carrasco Gimenez pictured at UCC last week