Bridge strikes
PAUL STEPHEN looks at how Internet of Things (IoT) technology is being used to create a potential solution to the infuriating problem of bridge strikes by tall road vehicles
Transreport’s Internet of Things technology.
On January 15, Network Rail reported that both it and Leicestershire County Council had been forced to close Kettering Road in Market Harborough after a bridge carrying the Midland Main Line was struck by a lorry.
With approximately 2,000 such ‘bridge strikes’ recorded across the network each year (at an average rate of more than five a day), this unfortunate incidence of driver negligence is an all-too-familiar tale of woe.
But what made events in Market Harborough all the more remarkable is that engineers had completed repairs to brickwork only minutes earlier, following a separate lorry collision the previous night.
Both incidents had occurred despite the presence of large fluorescent markings and signs clearly indicating the height restriction ahead, and regardless of the HGV drivers’ legal responsibility to know the heights of the vehicles involved.
Each bridge strike delays freight and passenger trains by two hours while checks are carried out. The average cost to NR is estimated at around £13,000 (about £13 million a year) to carry out repairs and to compensate train operating companies.
The true annual cost to the economy of bridge strikes is much harder to quantify, but has been estimated to be up to £ 23m once the value of undelivered goods and lost productivity to rail and road users from train delays and congestion are taken into account.
NR is able to claw back about half its annual outlay in insurance claims from the guilty parties, but is powerless to seek redress if a strike goes unreported by the driver.
Perhaps more worryingly, the obvious and immediate safety risk posed to members of the public and both rail and road users from bridge strikes cannot be combated unless further preventative action is taken.
NR stresses that it is taking the issue of bridge strikes increasingly seriously, and in October 2017 it launched a new campaign to coincide with a statistical peak that occurs in the winter months as road deliveries increase in the run-up to Christmas, and the nights draw in.
A national advertising campaign was launched in printed and social media, with eye-catching straplines such as ‘Lorries can’t limbo’ and ‘What the truck’ to make drivers of HGVs and large vehicles more aware of the size of their vehicles.
It followed extensive research that revealed that 43% of lorry drivers do not know the exact height of their vehicle, and that more than half do not consider railway bridges at all when planning their routes.
Further stages of NR’s campaign involved heavy engagement with some of the UK’s largest hauliers (including Wincanton and Eddie Stobart), bus operators and trade bodies such as the Road Haulage Association, to ensure that relevant training and support to drivers is made a higher priority.
The campaign was then re-launched last August with drivers encouraged to ‘wise up and size up’ and to use newly compiled information and resources, provided for free on the NR website to support driver training, and help spread the message.
Speaking to RAIL in December 2017 ( RAIL 842), NR’s senior engineer and London North Western route bridge strike champion Mark Wheel said the campaign would also be accompanied by a call for much stricter enforcement of penalties for drivers when strikes happen, in order to create a more effective deterrent.
He said: “Historically, there has been a reluctance to prosecute drivers for careless driving and their failure to comply with
road traffic signs. We’re not quite sure why, but we’re working very closely with police, the Home Office and Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency and traffic commissioners to toughen up on enforcement.
“There is no panacea for bridge strike prevention, but it’s about achieving incremental changes in behaviour which will build up over time. This campaign is not a one-hit wonder, and it will now feature in our national campaign schedule alongside the regular work we do to tackle trespass during the school holidays and suicide prevention.
“Promoting bridge strike prevention can be summed up very easily by the ‘Four Es’ - Education, Engineering, Enablement and Enforcement - and that is exactly what we’ll do.”
Also accompanying the campaign are NR’s more longstanding efforts to identify high-frequency sites where it can increase headroom or install steel beams to limit damage to infrastructure.
Better still, bridges such as the notorious Stuntney Road underpass in Ely have now been taken out of use completely following the opening of Cambridgeshire city’s new Southern Bypass on October 21 2018.
The bridge was officially the most struck bridge in the country, having been hit an incredible 32 times in the 12-month period preceding its closure to tall road vehicles.
NR has also pledged to encourage the development and trial of new and emerging technologies, such as in-cab low bridge warning devices, and even active brake assist systems that can automatically stop a vehicle without any intervention from the driver.
Route planning tools are also high on NR’s agenda in response to an illuminating report published by standards body RSSB in 2012 into the causes of strikes.
Entitled Reducing the number and impact of vehicle strikes on railway underline bridges, the report’s author Michael Woods found that part of the problem was drivers using cheap satnav devices, instead of specialist systems designed for lorries that can hold data on bridge heights to automatically route HGV drivers away from them.
NR has even supplied detailed information about its bridges to satnav manufacturers to make these systems more accurate, and
Promoting bridge strike prevention can be summed up very easily by the ‘Four Es’–Education, Engineering, Enable ment and Enforcement. Mark Wheel, Senior Engineer and Route Bridge Strike Champion, London North Western
yet hauliers are still opting for cheaper versions or the free services now offered by Google Maps.
Another person to spot this trend was MTR Crossrail Duty Head of Control Allison Dunn, who turned to tech company founder Jay Shen to ask if his company Transreport could develop a technological solution to fill this void.
Dunn had worked with Transreport in her previous role as Senior Information & Customer Experience Manager at South Western Railway, before she left for MTR in May 2018.
SWR had been one of four operators to test the Transreport-developed Passenger Assist app (that helps disabled passengers to navigate the railway) prior to its national roll-out in partnership with the Rail Delivery Group later this year.
Transreport is a small company of just 20 staff based in Hammersmith, but with an expanding global presence at offices in Beijing,
Our solution would cost no more than £500,000 to put on every bridge, which is very cheap compared to the cost of disruption from bridge strikes. Jay Shen, Transreport
Hong Kong and (very soon) Australia.
Founded by Shen in September 2016, it started life in his home garage in Coventry while he completed his PhD in Engineering, IoT and Sensor Technology at the University of Warwick.
Shen describes Transreport as a ‘passengercentric tech company, specialising in IoT and Blockchain technology with a focus on the transport sector’, which is backed by largely Chinese investors.
With expertise in software programming, data science, engineering, architecture and finance, Shen and his team now believe they have created the perfect system to link NR’s bridge data into Google mapping, while providing a free app to hauliers to enable route planning.
The app provides access to information, such as locations of low bridges across the UK, and an application for drivers to plan risk-reduced routes by inputting vehicle measurements.
The platform is also multi-lingual to cater for foreign drivers who may have trouble reading signs and other information in English, or who struggle to understand imperial units of measurement.
The app alerts the driver when the vehicle is approaching a low bridge, and provides
them with real time navigation updates.
Shen says: “Allison and I used to work together at SWR and had kept in touch. She told me about the big problem the rail industry was still having with bridge strikes, and that this could be a really interesting project for us to work on.
“We did our research and read the reports and found it strange that nothing much had been done, despite strikes costing NR £13m a year. Allison and I both thought that with the technology we have, it wouldn’t be hard to come up with a workable solution that we could demonstrate to NR.”
Transreport’s solution relies on small matchbox-sized devices being attached to bridges that provide GPS data on their locations. But that’s not all they can do, with the devices also acting as vibration sensors that could instantly alert NR if a bridge is struck, helping combat the problems of unreported or delayed reporting of strikes.
The sensors can do this by utilising an IoT gateway that connects them to the cloud so that data is securely logged and alerts are immediately sent to NR, drivers and insurers once a sensor detects conditions that exceed a predetermined threshold.
Crucially, the system also appears to be highly cost-effective, with Shen estimating that NR would need to find just £100,000 to fund its development and an initial trial, followed by a further £ 400,000 to roll it out across its entire network.
“We have software and hardware working together, and the technology is now very mature with a sensor costing just £ 200, but very accurate and easy to maintain, and with a battery life of up to 12 years,” he adds. “Previously it probably didn’t make much sense, economically, to install technology on bridges, but our solution would cost no more than £ 500,000 to put on every bridge, which is very cheap compared to the cost of disruption from bridge strikes.”
The next step is for NR to designate a test bridge, for which Dunn and Shen are still in negotiations. Installation would be nondisruptive, with no need for possessions to attach the small sensors.
“We would need to put four sensors on a medium-sized bridge so that we can start to gather vibration data and then set parameters to distinguish between trains passing overhead and actual bridge strikes. A one-month trial would be more than enough for us.”
Looking ahead, Shen believes this is not only a good opportunity to eradicate a seemingly persistent problem but to also send a strong signal of support to the UK’s fastgrowing community of fledgeling start-up tech firms.
After all, NR’s procurement strategy for Control Period 6 (April 2019-March 2024) contains bold commitments to provide more support for UK-based SMEs, and to further develop the nation’s home-grown skills base.
“The industry doesn’t have a good image in terms of delays so if you look at this holistically, as a matter of customer satisfaction, then it makes total sense to do this. Also, how often can NR say they are supporting a new tech start-up which is looking at an innovative solution?
“I hope this gives confidence to other start-ups, because if NR is prepared to give us this chance, then we can give them a new perspective. If you want to solve a problem this old then you probably want to talk to an outside company, and I hope we can be the inspiration to solve one or two of these problems.”
Should Shen and Transreport make the mark they desire, then perhaps it won’t just be the people of Market Harborough who’ll want to thank him.