Politecnico di Milano and Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with several major companies in the railway sector, have launched a joint university-business research centre to address modernisation in the transport area, concerning its infrastructure, engineering, environmental sustainability and economical aspects. JRC Trasporti has achieved several mobility milestones, including building Frecciarossa 1000, the first high-speed Italian train. Currently, its new challenges include reorganising the goods transport sector, integration of the railway infrastructure and digitalisation.

In 2018, the Foundation launched a Joint Research Centre (JRC) of excellence for research and innovation to railway systems, between Politecnico di Milano and several major companies in the railway sector: ABB, Hitachi Rail, Hitachi Rail STS, COlasRail, Bombardier Transportation, Contact, RFI, Faiveley Transport, Mercitalia, SITAV and Trenitalia.
This venture involved multi-disciplinary problems requiring partners with multi-disciplinary skills and the ability to bring in a wide range of engineering specialities in mechanical, electrotechnical, electronic, IT, telecommunications and civil engineering. In addition, the results achieved are significant for other sectors as well, an important aspect that establishes this research centre as a hub of innovation.

The centre has developed a railway diagnostic system to enable an innovative approach based upon predictive maintenance and introduced to the entire railway system simultaneously, using an entire fleet of commercial trains instead of a single diagnostic train.