Evaluation of different practices in railway interoperability certificates

It is necessary to ensure inter-country integration by making railway transportation more open to competition, and standardize railways, which show fundamental differences on a country basis, in order to ensure this integration. After this standardization is achieved, passenger / freight transportation will be carried out more easily with more effective time usage. The European Union has determined the conditions that countries must comply with in order to ensure standardization in railways. These requirements include areas such as certification, infrastructure, energy, maintenance, signalization and management. In order to create an integrated railway network, it is a necessity to ensure the technical compatibility of railway systems such as track width, geometric properties of tracks, loads on track structures, rail properties, gauge dimensions and station properties. The performance that a railway system should have in order to ensure the uninterrupted and safe movement of railway vehicles in international railway traffic is called interoperability. Rail transportation services between national and international railway systems include the conditions that must be fulfilled for interoperability in order to ensure railway safety in accordance with the Railway Safety Regulation. In order to meet the basic requirements and ensure the interoperability of the railway system, the European Commission publishes the technical specifications for interoperability (TSI) in the Official Journal of the European Union for each subsystem. In this study, the concept of interoperability in rail transport is explained. The main components of interoperability are discussed. Its technical, operational, and legal dimensions are defined and analyzed in international documents. After evaluating the railway transportation and interoperability studies in Turkey, the problems encountered were determined and solution suggestions were presented.