Digital Railway’s next moves…
As first phase schemes including Thameslink and Crossrail move closer to completion later this year, Network Rail’s Managing Director for Digital Railway DAVID WABOSO outlines his vision to PAUL STEPHEN for where the DR programme rollout will go next
2018
is shaping up to be a historic year for NR’s fledgling Digital Railway programme, as it nears its two most significant milestones to date.
The first will occur in May, when up to 18 Thameslink services per hour will commence running through central London under the control of European Train Control System (ETCS) Level 2 and Automatic Train Operation (ATO) technology. It will then rise to 24 trains per hour in December 2019.
Also in May, Crossrail services are currently scheduled to start operating under the supervision of ETCS between Heathrow terminals and Heathrow Junction. They will eventually run through to Paddington using ETCS by December 2019, although delays in the testing of signalling equipment on-board Crossrail’s fleet of Class 345 Aventras are likely to affect this timetable ( RAIL 846).
The term Digital Railway (DR) was first coined in 2015, and therefore several years after Crossrail and the Thameslink Upgrade programmes were first conceived. Even so, equipping sections of these main lines with ETCS (the signalling component of European Rail Traffic Management System, ERTMS) will mark the first large-scale deployments of digital signalling technologies in the UK away from metro systems such as London Underground, where ATO and in-cab signalling first appeared as long ago as 1968.
They will therefore both be claimed as early victories for DR’s Managing Director David Waboso, who made clear to RAIL 12 months ago that supporting these independently governed schemes would be the first step in a carefully considered and incremental migration of DR principles to the rest of the network ( RAIL 819).
Having been appointed to the role in June 2016, Waboso had quickly dismissed any notion of a more rapid ‘big bang’ mass rollout, in favour of this more sensible ‘bottom-up’ approach.
His justification for setting a more cautious policy direction was rooted not only in the considerable experience he was able to call upon from delivering complex digital resignalling projects for LU’s Jubilee, Victoria and Northern lines (see panel, page 52), but also having to make his decision against a backdrop of limited funding. Meanwhile, he had inherited a DR programme beset by delays, false starts and failed commitments - for example, the planned installation of more experimental ETCS Level 3 moving block technology on the Wherry Lines by 2019, which was eventually shelved in August 2016.
Crucially, Waboso also wanted to
It’s almost an act of vandalism to take a brand new fleet and then take them apart to fit this stuff. We therefore want to avoid that at all costs, because it’s expensive, disruptive, and performance is never quite the same afterwards. David Waboso, Managing Director for Digital Railway, Network Rail
substantially de-risk an enterprise which has many implementation challenges - not least integrating new technology with existing systems, the limited delivery experience of ETCS in the UK, and the complex logistics of fitting rolling stock with on-board equipment.
Now able to pause and reflect a full year later, Waboso still stands by that early judgement call, adding: “I think we had to instil a sense of pragmatism, and that’s been the ambition. We need to try and see where the needs and capacity challenges on the railway can be solved by this technology, while aligning it to a business case-driven point of view.
“This will allow us to build on first phase schemes and get a solid foundation from those this year and early next year, before engaging on a plan for Control Period 6 [NR’s next five-year spending period between April 2019-March 2024] and beyond. But we have to think about how we can do this in a sustainable way.
“The technology base is largely there as, quite frankly, this is not cutting-edge stuff and train control technology is nearly 40 years old. It’s just that the logistics [of transferring it to main line railways] are pretty large.”
Waboso and his team are currently engaged in devising a final implementation strategy for DR in CP6 that is fully aligned to NR’s Strategic Business Plan (SBP). Published on February 13 ( RAIL 847), the SBP confidently predicts that CP6 will herald “the end of analogue signalling” renewals and “the real start of Digital Railway”.
It also provides some clues as to what Waboso’s final DR strategy will look like, although whether sufficient funding can be secured for his proposals remains subject to both internal and external review before the Office of Rail and Road publishes its Final Determination on the SBP in October.
Nevertheless, the document reveals that much of the DR focus until 2024 will be on the extensive deployment of traffic management (TM) systems and Connected Driver Advisory Systems (C-DAS).
By providing real-time running information to drivers (or on-board ATO equipment if it is installed), and instructions to optimise performance, these systems can either complement ETCS or be used in isolation to combat any delays arising from the extra services that ETCS enables (or at any other times during disruption).
Waboso says this will provide a quick and cost-effective way to ‘front load’ many of the performance benefits offered by DR, until business cases can be approved for full in-cab signalling and all the new onboard and trackside equipment that it requires.
He explains: “At the moment, drivers get very little information except an aspect and a radio. This will help de-conflict the timetable by telling the driver to speed up, dwell, or whatever else.
“The other great thing you can do for the train operating companies with TM and C-DAS is to link it to crew and stock management. Perturbation puts them all in the wrong place, so having a computer to link it to will give you the best solution.
“Generally speaking, the business case for TM and C-DAS tends to be shorter and much shallower than ETCS. And because it’s less intrusive on the existing signalling system, it can be done relatively cheaply and quickly.”
Waboso says that a handful of targeted ETCS schemes will still go ahead in CP6, however, with business cases being prepared for where its deployment is most costeffective.
This will be where it can be most closely aligned with major signalling renewals already due to take place, and where the considerable cost of retrofitting trains with on-board equipment can be avoided.
The potential expense associated with the latter was most clearly demonstrated in December, when NR signed a contract with Siemens worth up to £150 million to equip 750 ‘first in class’ freight locomotives with ETCS equipment and software ( RAIL 843).
A much more cost-effective option is to wait until new trains are ordered, and to specify the inclusion of this equipment by the manufacturer (as was the case with Thameslink’s Class 700s). Alternatively, most new fleets are now delivered ‘ETCS compatible’ - equipment can be fitted far less intrusively at a later date than is the case with older stock that has no such provision, although this is still more expensive than fully fitting ETCS from the outset.
The railway community - government, funders, train operators, routes and the Department - must start with an understanding that the industry has to remain competitive. David Waboso, Managing Director for Digital Railway, Network Rail
Says Waboso: “Until now, it’s been OK to procure trains and infrastructure separately, because provided things such as EMC [Electro Magnetic Compatibility] and other standards are met, they’re not really interlinked.
“ETCS essentially brings them both together, so you have to look at where you have new trains that can be fitted and where you have resignalling going on, to give you the best business case.
“Your worst business case is where you have to bring forward signalling and throw things away you’ve already invested in, or where you have to retrofit a huge number of trains - which is why we’re keen to fit them in the factory. It’s almost an act of vandalism to take a brand new fleet and then take them apart to fit this stuff. We therefore want to avoid that at all costs, because it’s expensive, disruptive, and [train] performance is never quite the same afterwards.”
According to the SBP, the ETCS schemes that are likely to be given the go-ahead for digital resignalling in CP6 include the trans-Pennine route between Manchester and Leeds, and the southern portion of the East Coast Main Line between King’s Cross, Moorgate and Peterborough.
The Feltham Resignalling Project, the Great Eastern and South Western Main Lines, and Crewe’s interface with HS2 are also being considered. These could potentially be paid for from sources including NR’s £ 4.5 billion CP6 signalling renewals fund, the National Productivity Investment Fund, enhancement funding from the Department for Transport, contributions from HS2, or third-party funding.
DR schemes in CP6 will most likely comprise ETCS Level 2 overlaid onto conventional signalling systems (which will have to be retained or renewed to accommodate the large numbers of trains in service that will remain unequipped for in-cab signalling).
Because of this, a second wave of CP6 renewals schemes are also currently being identified to be made ‘DR-ready’. Although they will not be equipped with ‘live’ ETCS equipment, they will be relatively simple to upgrade at a later date once more trains have been fitted with in-cab signaling (or older trains are retrofitted).
Only then will NR have the realistic choice of either replacing existing signalling likefor-like, or removing fixed lineside signals and upgrading to ETCS Level 3 full moving block signalling.
Waboso predicts that this point will be reached in CP7 (2024-29), when more than 7,000 new carriages will have entered service (according to Rail Delivery Group figures), and up to 63% of NR’s 64,000 signalling equivalent units (SEUs) will have had to be renewed.
These two factors will give Waboso much of the alignment he needs to produce robust business cases for DR, potentially resulting in a surge of digital-only projects.
“We think there are three or four areas where there is pretty good alignment, like trans-Pennine where new trains for Northern [currently on order from CAF] will be fitted or enabled and the line is due a big upgrade anyway. Interestingly, you also have the Crewe resignalling and the introduction of new trains for HS2 towards the back end of CP6, and so there’s a big opportunity to create additional capacity for these trains to travel through to Manchester.
“We have the East Coast Main Line, where a huge resignalling is due and you’ll have a lot of trains already fitted (or compatible) for ETCS like Thameslink’s Class 700s and Virgin Trains East Coast’s Azumas. But then the big opportunity will be in CP7.
“DR-ready means that when we come back
to do the final DR, no more cost or closures are needed. It’s the equivalent of digging up a road twice so you put all the cabling in, hardware, power supply and trackside connections so that when you come back, it’s just about installing that final software and flicking a switch and running some tests.
“The big opportunity is in CP7, when the bow wave of signalling renewal projects really hits because people have been deferring resignalling until DR comes in. But in CP6 you start to get an industry base and some capability, expertise and products, and then we’ll have this massive introduction of trains.
“I think the big prize is in CP7, to not go and replicate infrastructure with lineside signals and ETCS. But because I don’t have all the trains fitted, in CP6 there will be a need to have a degree of infrastructure for non-fitted trains. Once they are fitted, subsequent resignalling can then be all digital, which starts to give you the big OPEX [operating expense] savings.”
He adds: “The opportunity exists because of these two emerging facts - a huge number of trains to be fitted in the factory, and this huge amount of resignalling. Those are two historically significant facts for the rail industry and if it doesn’t get its head around that, then in my view DR will not happen for another 30 or 40 years, when the next cycle comes along with this volume of resignalling.”
A failure to grasp this opportunity to modernise its asset base would also increase the threat posed to rail by other modes of transport, says Waboso. He points to the number of autonomous road vehicles that are reaching increasingly advanced stages of production.
There is also a financial imperative for NR to realise the cost savings associated with DR as soon as possible, by reducing the amount of trackside infrastructure required and moving to a new remote conditionbased maintenance regime. This can only be realised by reaching ETCS Level 3, which will enable DR to fully dispense with assetheavy analogue signalling and the more labour-intensive and disruptive maintenance it requires.
This is likely to result in considerable changes to current working practices, although Waboso is keen to stress that greater automation is not a ruse to reduce the size of the workforce.
“Nothing I’ve spoken about is a threat to anyone’s job, and this has never been about job-cutting - it’s quite the reverse. This has been about creating more capacity and making the industry more competitive for the next generations, so it is very much a vote of confidence in the future of the industry. If anything, this will increase the number of jobs and skills across the industry.
“But if this doesn’t happen, then we are essentially continuing to use all these Victorian principles. We have colour lights now, but fundamentally nothing has changed [from semaphore signalling]. You can drop a track circuit in here and a light bulb there, but the driver is still looking at it.
“What I’ve learned in this job is that you have to really explain the principles first to everyone, because although it seems obvious at the end it’s about joining lots of previously disparate things. And so the railway community - government, funders, train operators, routes and the Department - must start with an understanding that the industry has to remain competitive.
“You will be seeing metro technology shamelessly adopted by cars, which is all basic moving block technology. You have drones and platooning of freight vehicles and coaches, so other things will start to look and feel more like trains in mass transit, but at a fraction of the cost of our stuff.
“That’s our competition and we have to be alive to that, and not just carry on saying: ‘it’s OK, it’s not happening, please keep giving us the money’.”
Alongside funding, the other outstanding question for Waboso is how he intends to procure the various aspects of DR.
In an Early Contractor Involvement report published in December 2016, Waboso argued
Colour light signals, bases and gantries - that’s where all the money goes. Tomorrow’s signalling needs much less trackside infrastructure and is all software-based, so it’s almost a different gig. David Waboso, Managing Director for Digital Railway, Network Rail
that the cost of installing, maintaining and operating DR assets could be reduced by 10%-30% by fundamentally altering the nature of relationships between NR and its suppliers.
Unlike traditional procurement in signalling, the report advocated exploring alternative funding mechanisms for DR - shifting the focus of procurement towards brokering longer-term contracts that consider whole life asset costs, and rewarding suppliers for performance, innovation and collaboration.
This new approach is currently being trialled under a two-year contract signed by NR in July with Resonate, to trial its traffic management system on the Great Western Main Line.
Under the deal Resonate has paid to install and run the system, which has been designed to reduce delays by 15%. The company will then receive a percentage of the value of compensation payments that NR is able to save from reduced delays on the network.
Waboso says that NR has yet to finalise its signalling procurement strategy and continues to explore its options, but he is acutely aware that decisions must be made sooner rather than later to enable the supply chain to fully mobilise and effectively engage.
“Infrastructure is difficult because it’s complex, safety-critical, intrusive, requires closures, and is expensive. So, in CP6 we’re arguing that we should take a chunk of the money that’s in the SBP and allocate it to DR.
“We’re assembling the bare bones of a plan for CP6, and we’re talking to funders, stakeholders, operators, infrastructure managers and the supply chain so that people can at least begin to align themselves behind it. But the main thing for CP6 is that we’ve really got to start going to market this side of April 2019, which is all subject to getting finance in place.
“We think there is a large amount of market appetite to provide TMS [to NR] in more of a service way, as shown by the Resonate trial, and that they [suppliers] will take payment based on performance.
“Whether you can buy ETCS as a service or whether it has to be procured like a conventional bit of kit, we’re still exploring. We need to work through that in terms of details and logistics, but one thing we certainly want to do is build on the ECI workshops and buy it through this new way of doing business.
“The supply chain has told us very clearly that they want to work on whole life, routebased, outcome-based procurement with payment for performance, and we’re a fair way down the runway on working all of this out.”
For rolling stock that is privately owned, financed and operated, Waboso concedes that NR will potentially have to fund the fitting of in-cab signalling in older trains that lack any equipment and in ‘ETCS compatible’ fleets, if it wants them to start running using ETCS. Private asset finance might also be considered.
For new trains, it should be possible to include it in specifications issued by rolling stock companies, operators or the DfT at little or no cost to NR.
How quickly fitment can be completed will dictate the overall pace that ETCS Level 3 can be reached, and so Waboso is calling for a sizeable portion of the £ 4.5bn CP6 signalling fund to be dedicated to this purpose.
“We have 64,000 SEUs on the network and 40,000 that need renewing in the next ten to 15 years, and if you multiply that by a notional unit cost, you quickly get to several billion. For me, the big picture that’s emerging is that ideally, we need to spend our money fitting the trains. That way, when you do this huge amount of resignalling, it’s so much cheaper.
“It’s chalk and cheese because colour light signals, bases and gantries - that’s where all the money goes. Tomorrow’s signalling needs much less trackside infrastructure and is all software-based, so it’s almost a different gig.
“This is a strategically important decision for us. If we do it, we can probably do it within existing funding anyway, because the cost of resignalling will more than pay for fitment. And then all the benefits we talk about - faster line speeds, increased capacity and performance - we’d get for free.”
Finally, RAIL puts to Waboso that NR will lose one of its greatest DR advocates when NR Chief Executive Mark Carne retires later this year.
Carne is a staunch personal champion of the programme, but Waboso does not feel that his departure will affect the strong momentum that DR has established, nor prevent any further progress.
He concludes: “He [Carne] created this programme and gave me my job, but the trick with these things is to make it independent of whoever’s in charge. Initially you need individuals to push and prod, but I think we’ve got enough momentum now to see it through, and so his legacy will live on.”