ERA Factsheets: Unlocking railway data

The European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) has taken significant steps towards its mission of fostering a sustainable and safe railway system without frontiers. At a dedicated press briefing yesterday, ERA announced the official launch of the ERA Railway Factsheets, an intuitive tool providing railway statistics and insights from several sources in an accessible format. Importantly, ERA presented its fundamental work on linked data and the ERA knowledge graph, a data architecture that reduces fragmentation and enables efficiency gains for the entire European railway sector.

The ERA Factsheets offer a comprehensive overview of the rail sector across European countries with one-click access. Covering aspects such as transport statistics, railway organisations, rolling stock, infrastructure, safety, market structure, and the legal framework, the tool unlocks data from ERA and other organisations, providing a broad and accurate representation of the European railway landscape. The factsheets are set to be regularly updated, reflecting the commitment to ensure that the information remains current and relevant over time.

Whereas ERA Factsheets bring fragmented data together, ERA’s linked data project changes the fundamentals on how railway data is defined and shared. Today, railway data is typically kept in isolated and incompatible databases. Linked data is central to ERA's strategic plan to overcome challenges such as data gaps, unaligned definitions, and accessibility barriers. It sets the foundation for more efficient data sharing between railway actors across Europe and novel applications.

Explore the ERA Railway Factsheets and provide feedback at factsheets@era.europa.eu to contribute to the continuous improvement of this pivotal tool.

To discover more about the ERA's work on linked open data, read our data story on a use case of the ERA knowledge graph.

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