Unlocking Innovation for Passenger Railways

About the event

If you are working on an innovation, invention, new technology or practice to improve passenger experience and passenger railway operations, you now have an opportunity to showcase your work and meet key industry buyers in an exclusive event focused on innovation on passenger railways!

Unlocking Innovation for Passenger Railways is an interactive marketplace showcase event, where various innovators will demonstrate their ideas and creations in five key areas – At Home, En Route, At Station, On Board, and In Depot. Each hour of the event there will be demonstrations in one of the areas where the exhibitors will have a chance to showcase their innovations to an audience of train operators, infrastructure owners and Tier 1 suppliers. 

The Railway Industry Association (RIA) has partnered with the University College of London to host the event at their PEARL (Person-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory) facility in Dagenham. PEARL, opened in April 2021, explores the ways in which people interact with their environment and is the only space in the world where researchers can precisely simulate large-scale environments such as train stations or town centres and test people’s reactions to them in detail.

This event is part of RIA’s Unlocking Innovation 2022 programme which is looking at the theme of “Getting ready for Great British Railways”. A new public body, Great British Railways (GBR), will soon begin integrating the railway industry, owning the infrastructure, collecting fare revenue, running and planning the network, and setting most fares and timetables. GBR will contract private partners to operate most trains to the timetables and fares it specifies. 

Unlocking Innovation programme is supported by the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN) and Network Rail R&D Portfolio. UKRRIN is set to expand its core capabilities with a new immersive Centre of Excellence focused on Inclusive Passenger Experience. This Centre of Excellence will provide a physical space for the development and testing of innovations across four thematic areas of: inclusive design, passenger digital connectivity, passenger experience performance metrics and future passenger preferences and demand.