Data mining
The growing importance of data generation in rail.
It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the rising passenger demand for the railway over the past 20 years will only continue to put strain on the current network. If today’s rate of growth continues for the next 20 years, people could well be making one billion extra journeys a year by 2030.
Projects such as HS2 and Crossrail represent opportunities to create significant additional capacity, but they are not enough on their own. Drawing more out of the existing railway will be key to sustainable growth across the country.
“We have to do something in order to meet the demand to keep the country flowing,” says Mark Ferrer, Siemens Rail Automation’s operations director for Digital Railway. “Because you can say that the transport systems are the arteries of the nation. They carry the economy around the country.
“There is a latent capacity in the current infrastructure which is constrained by the way we control train movements today. For example, look at some lines and you’ll see demand currently exceeds the capacity of that line. But if you watch the line you won’t see a train for ages. That’s just because of the way we control the movement of trains.”
Ferrer explains that if we were to apply radio-based digital control (such as ETCS) to the network, we would have permanent continuous control over the movement of trains, as opposed to the system we have today where signalling at fixed locations along the trackside conveys information to the train, so there is no continuous control. Solving that means we can fit more trains on the track and they can run closer together, thus increasing capacity.
Of course, this will mean the infrastructure is being used more intensively and it’s wearing out quicker, with a knock-on effect on maintenance. Any failures will have a much bigger impact.
Says Ferrer: “The railway needs failure prediction and analysis with remote
For me, Digital Railway is all about accurate prediction Mark Ferrer, Operations Director, Digital Railway, Siemens Rail Automation UK
condition monitoring, where the system generates predictions about the performance of the infrastructure.”
Predicting failures means they can be avoided before any delays to passengers are caused. But the added benefit of these Digital Railway systems is fewer trackside assets, and therefore fewer things to fail.
“When you have a system that has digital traffic management, train control, diagnostics and failure analysis, all this digital information can give us a really good, highly performing infrastructure. Now all we have to do is get the right passenger to the right train at the right time.”
Radio-based train control systems such as ETCS are not new to railways. But this is a relatively new concept for the UK main line. The Cambrian Line is the only current example in this country. On the continent, it’s a different story. “With high-speed lines in Europe - in Spain and Germany for example, they are predominantly controlled by some form of in-cab signalling, either radio or some other form of transmission,” says Ferrer.
Siemens has carried out a number of projects in Spain and Germany to deploy ETCS to the high-speed lines. A project completed in 2013 involved ETCS Level 1 being rolled out across the Madrid-Valencia-Albacete line (a 438km high-speed route). In a consortium with Thales, Siemens also modernised the signalling and control equipment on the 340km section of highspeed line between Olmedo and Ourense in Northern Spain, enabling the line to become one of the country’s key high-speed corridors.
In Germany, a project is currently under way to improve transport links between Munich and Berlin by closing a gap in the country’s high-speed network and delivering a journey time between the two cities of four hours (it is currently more than six).
Says Ferrer: “In both countries, we’ve provided ETCS to enable the trains to be controlled along those lines. The systems that we have deployed there are very similar to the ones we’re deploying in the UK.
“From 2018 we will be deploying ETCS Level 2 on the Thameslink Core. That system is basically the same as the one controlling the high-speed lines in Spain. We’ve installed some extra functions because one is a high-speed line and the other is an intensive commuter line, but it’s essentially the same system. So, we’ve taken a lot of learning and knowledge from what we’ve done in overseas projects and we’ve brought it into the UK.”
The Thameslink Programme is a flagship project for Siemens, but it will also be the first deployment of Automatic Train Operation (ATO) over an ETCS Train Protection System in the UK, and one of the first in the world.
Siemens has recognised the longterm importance of having a sustainable capability in ETCS and ATO in the UK, and so has nurtured a UK team.
Ferrer’s view is that Digital Railway here is a long-term strategy and so we need to have people in the UK that understand how it works and have the ability to deploy it nationwide. By transferring the knowledge Siemens has gained in Spain to people here, it leaves a lasting capability legacy.
“If we’re serious about the Digital Railway - and certainly I am - I need the capability here in the UK to meet the needs of its customers.”
If we make the right decisions for Digital Railway, what does Ferrer think the UK network will be like in 20 years?
“I think it could be a system where demand is matched by capacity, or capacity matches demand. By using data streams like social media and online booking systems, with historical data, we could make more accurate predictions.
“For example, what was going on a year ago today on the railway? Was it a sunny day, was it raining, was it freezing? How many people were using the railway? Using that data, we’ll have a prediction of what the railway is going to look like tomorrow and that could be vastly different to what it is today.
“We could run models that predict tomorrow’s demand, so in the morning everything on the railway is where it should be to meet the demands of the day. I think in the future we could enjoy much more personalised travel, where the capacity meets the demand. So, you won’t have to worry about whether you’ll have to stand, because you know there will be a seat for you.
“There are challenges in getting there, but digitising the railway will also generate this flow of useful data. Then we’ll find that there’s information within that data that we can use to provide better options to people. I think it will be a voyage of discovery.
“But the most important step of any journey is the first one. We’ve started with Thameslink and Great Western, but now the industry as a whole needs to embrace the concept.”