Rail’s Next Decade: Making the Right Choices When Everything Is a Priority
At InnoTrans 2026 in Berlin, Connor Cox, Global Industry Director, Transportation at IFS, took to the Mobility+ Corner to explore one of the biggest challenges facing rail organisations: how to make the right long-term investment choices when everything feels like a priority.
Rail organisations are being asked to build tomorrow’s railway while continuing to run today’s. Critical assets need renewing, fleets and infrastructure need modernising, capacity needs to grow and new technology needs to be introduced, all while maintaining safe, reliable services.
When good plans compete
Renewal, modernisation and growth are no longer separate or sequential priorities. They are happening at the same time and competing for many of the same resources, including capital, people, materials, engineering access and delivery capacity.
As Connor highlighted during the session, this can mean several good plans become one impossible plan. More service can reduce engineering access, fleet modifications can compete with heavy maintenance, and unexpected failures can consume resources already committed elsewhere.
The value of an investment choice is not only in what it solves today, but in what it enables, displaces or commits the organisation to next.
Connor Cox
Global Industry Director, Transportation
IFS
The challenge for rail leaders is therefore not simply deciding what needs investment. It is understanding which combination of investments will deliver the greatest value while remaining affordable and achievable.
Making the right choices and delivering the outcomes
Every investment choice comes with a trade-off. Renew, modernise, expand, extend, defer or retire, and the decision will affect safety, reliability, capacity, resilience, cost and ultimately the risks carried forward.
That makes it increasingly important to connect long-term investment decisions with delivery and operational reality.
Connor closed the session around three principles: Choose. Deliver. Learn. Balance investment choices against risk and constraints, connect those choices to executable plans, and use operational evidence to improve the next decision.
Explore the choices shaping rail’s next decade
What happens when renewal, modernisation and growth all compete for the same resources? The Choices Shaping Rail’s Next Decade brief takes a closer look at the investment trade-offs rail leaders are navigating, and how organisations can balance value, risk and real-world constraints when deciding what comes next.
Explore the brief to discover the investment choices shaping rail’s next decade.