201703 – Leveque – Advanced Features Over ETCS for Suburban Railway Operation

Traditionally, suburban railway operation is supported by mainline signalling and train control systems, ETCS based solution being the most common solution nowadays, while urban railway operation makes use of CBTC based signalling system. The business requirements of an urban railway network can vary from one railway network to another across the world but also over the time for the same rail operator; traffic density increase, capital investment profile, regulation evolution. The need for a seamless and cost-effective signalling technology upgrade path is essential to meet the diverse and evolving business requirements. The proposed Advanced features built-on a standard ETCS signalling solution delivers enhanced traffic capacity with metro-type functionalities, trackside infrastructure reduction together with operation and maintenance savings. Besides the technical and operational description of an advanced ETCS signalling solution, the paper also presents potential implementation strategies supporting incremental investment capability, automation enhancement, headway improvement and solution deployment risk mitigation.

The advanced features over ETCS detailed in this paper are Virtual Block Sectioning and scalable Automatic Train Operation. These features can be incrementally implemented to meet the current and future business requirements of a suburban railway operation. A case study is presented to illustrate the performance benefits of a scalable ATO overlaid onto an ETCS solution for a suburban application.