Potential achievements and impact
	An effective and economical railway infrastructure is crucial for the European surface transports. In recent years, traffic loads and speeds have been increasing and will continue to do so. As a consequence, demands will increase on existing railway bridges regarding loads, speeds and robustness, why infrastructure reliability and durability must be enhanced.   Through this project rational procedures will improve and simplify the assessment of bearing capacity for bridges, and more refined methods will be developed for modelling, monitoring, maintenance, repair and strengthening. This will allow for upgrading of the bridges to higher loads and higher traffic capacities.   The needs in this respect are similar throughout Europe even though the bridges themselves can be quite different. The resources in each country are, however, too small for these kinds of activities. Integrated activities are needed for effectiveness and competitiveness.   Present codes are mostly based on past failures, and have successively been made safer by adding new clauses. Failures tend to result from phenomena that are not yet treated in the codes at the time of failure. The present codes are good for the design of new structures but can be excessively conservative for existing ones. This project will provide background material forming the basis for the future codes and standards for the assessment of bridges.   On societal and cultural level the project will not only facilitate communication and transportation between European countries as the existing railway systems are improved. The improved methods for maintenance, repair, strengthening and monitoring will make it possible to save more of our culturally and historically important bridges instead of replacing them, thus preserving an important part of the nations’ heritage. Hence, the project will deliver systems and methods, forming a “toolbox” for direct application in practical and efficient use in connection with maintenance, assessment, strengthening and repair of bridges.   The contents and use of this “toolbox” will be demonstrated through the exploitation and dissemination activities within the project. These activities include demonstration of methods developed in the project by applying them to existing bridges, training of personnel in using the developed methods as well as arranging of seminars and workshops that focus on the application of the new methods.