Digital Automatic Coupling (DAC) represents a cornerstone innovation for the transformation of rail freight towards a fully digital, automated and sustainable system across Europe. Beyond a purely technological upgrade, DAC is a critical enabler for achieving the objectives of the European Green Deal and the ambitions set out in the Digitalisation Package 2022, by improving efficiency, safety, interoperability and environmental performance in rail freight operations.
The deployment of DAC is being advanced through the European DAC Delivery Programme (EDDP), an integral element of Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking (EU-Rail) and its multiannual work programme. Within this framework, DAC plays a central role in Europe’s Rail flagship project FP5 TRANS4M-R, specifically within the workstream on Fully Digitalised Freight Train Operations (FDFTO), which focuses on enabling and scaling up DAC-based operations across the European rail freight system.
Against this strategic and political backdrop, the DACFIT project provides targeted and operationally critical support to the EDDP and the EU-Rail Joint Undertaking. DACFIT brings together a network of recognised experts from technical, managerial and operational domains to generate robust evidence, implementation concepts and actionable plans that are essential for the successful migration towards DAC.
The project’s core objective is to enable and de-risk the implementation of the EDDP DAC migration roadmap. To achieve this, DACFIT addresses key challenges along the entire pathway to impact, including quantitative and qualitative fleet analyses, retrofit engineering concepts, planning of retrofit capacity, and the development of comprehensive implementation and deployment plans. By systematically linking fleet readiness, technical feasibility and industrial capacity, DACFIT ensures that DAC deployment can progress at scale and within realistic timeframes.
Through its results, DACFIT directly contributes to accelerating the transition to a digitalised, automated and sustainable European rail freight network. The project supports evidence-based decision-making at European level and lays the groundwork for large-scale DAC roll-out across thousands of freight wagons, thereby strengthening the competitiveness of rail freight, reducing operational costs, and contributing to substantial CO2 emissions reductions. In this way, DACFIT translates strategic policy objectives into concrete, implementable actions and supports Europe’s long-term transport, climate and digital transformation goals.
