2015 – October – Marillet et al – Headway improvement through ETCS Level 2, ATO and track sectioning optimisation

Pierre-Henri Marillet Scott Lister Pty Ltd.   Francois Pignard Scott Lister Pty Ltd.   Luke Lee MRailSig BE AMIRSE MIEAust Scott Lister Pty Ltd. The trend across the world is for introduction of in-cab signalling to save on infrastructure costs, increase safety and improve performance of railway systems. This is happening today in all suburban networks within major Australian cities. This paper discusses the potential performance that an automated (GoA2) in-cab signalling system based on ETCS Level 2 with AoE and optimised track sectioning may achieve in a dense suburban network. To do so, the paper firstly explains the differences between operational and theoretical headways which have been used throughout the paper, followed by principles of the headway calculations for lineside and in-cab signalling systems and the key concepts of ETCS and ATO having direct impact on the theoretical headway. An optimisation methodology for track sectioning is then introduced along with the result of a case study to test its effectiveness on a typically dense suburban network trying to achieve a theoretical headway of 120s. The results of the study have demonstrated that a significant improvement in the theoretical headway can be made with a major reduction in the asset quantities that is beyond the limit of the conventional signalling system can achieve.This means that for the dense suburban network studied, a reliable operation beyond 22 trains per hour can be achieved with ETCS Level 2 only, while 24 reliable trains per hour can be achieved when adding the ATO over ERTMS functionalities.