201811 – Senesi, Nardi, Filippini & Trivedi – Advanced Signalling Systems for High Density Applications

The railways serving Australian capital cities are no different to many railways around the world that face the challenge of rapidly growing populations in their urban areas. Providing improved capacity on existing lines and building new lines to deliver increased services, reducing operating costs, and improving the customer experience all feature as goals for the railway’s over-arching objective of contributing to the creation of liveable cities.

The application of an innovative ETCS solution is one key strategy that is available to assist in achieving this objective by offering an opportunity to:
• Minimize infrastructure upgrading by improving network capacity Trains Per Hour and Trains Paths Per Hour through implementing the latest ETCS baseline and smartest TMS, along with interoperable ATO over ETCS.
• Provide dynamic updating of trips/journeys, improving customer experience by informing them in real time of any impact to their journey times.
• Update key assets/infrastructure information by increasing the ability to respond to network disturbances/issues in a faster manner.
• Drive the trains to the most efficient speed profiles, thereby reducing energy demands on the network and improving service capacity.

The application of ETCS Level 3 functionalities coupled with innovative solutions for train integrity management provide the key pillars of a High Density solution.

The Italian Railway has always been a pioneer in ETCS applications, starting with first ETCS Level 2 line in revenue service in 2005, and now with the current application of the High Density solution for busy areas like Milan Junction. By freely sharing the experience on ETCS projects from a major European operator like Italian Railway this paper envisages to provide valuable underpinning for similar ETCS projects foreseen in the very near future in Australia.