TR1103 CODE B3.2 Rail Area Report (May 2001) RAILWAY TRANSPORT FINAL AREA REPORT

Transcription

1 B3.2 Rail Area Report (May 2001) RAILWAY TRANSPORT FINAL AREA REPORT CODE (TR1103) is an Accompanying Measure Of The Transport Sector Of The TELEMATICS APPLICATIONS Programme (TAP, 4th Framework Programme for RTD&D, )

2 Project Identification CODE (TR1103) is an accompanying measure responsible for supporting the concertation activities, undertaking outreach activities and co-ordinating the reporting of the key results and achievements within the Transport Sector of the Telematics Applications Programme (4FP for RTD&D, ). The consortium is composed of 6 partners and a number of subcontractors: Partners WS Atkins Consultants CERTU Keller & Friedrich Verkehrsforschung und Beratung Name Role in the project Contact Project management UTTF/IUTTF organisation Road telematics co-ordination Vehicle control reporting Technical Co-ordination Traveller Information reporting Public Transport Operation reporting Traveller Intermodality co-ordination CARTS 1999 preparation Fraser SOMMERVILLE Michel BILLOTTE Hartmut KELLER Heusch-Boesefeldt GmbH Driver Information reporting Peter PHILLIPS Eratosthenes SA Barcelona Tecnologia S.A Network & Traffic Management reporting Demand management reporting Christopher VEINOGLOU Simon HAYES Additional Information Home page of the TAP-Transport sector: ( Home page of the IST-Transport & Tourism sector: ( The picture on the front page is attributable to the MORANE project ii

3 Document identification Deliverable Number B 3.2 Deliverable Nature Dissemination Level Type of Deliverable Work-package Id. RE PU PD B3 Date of Preparation May 2001 Document Reference BX5329/Documents/D0190v3 Issue May 01 Authors(s) CARLO PENTIMELLI Laboratori F. G. Marconi Written and edited by the Area reporter: Carlo Pentimelli Tel: +39 (05) Fax: +39 (05) cpenti@labs.it Reviewed by the Area Officer: Yvan LACHAPELLE DG INFSO - B5 200 rue de la loi - BU 29 2 B Bruxelles Tel: Fax: infob5@cec.eu.int Issued on behalf of the CODE Project by: Fraser Sommerville WS Atkins Consultants Ltd Auchinleck House Five Ways UK - Birmingham B15 1DJ Tel: Fax: fraser.sommerville@wsatkins.com The content of this report is the sole responsibility of its publishers and in no way represents the views of the Commission or its services. European Communities Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, save where otherwise stated. iii

4 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY... vi 1 INTRODUCTION CONTEXT OBJECTIVES OF THE REPORT SCOPE OF THE RAIL AREA OF TAP-TRANSPORT USERS SERVICES MAIN PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED TELEMATICS APPLICATIONS PART OF THE SCOPE ADDRESSED WITHIN THE PROGRAMME PROGRAMME ACHIEVEMENTS SERVICES TO TRAVELLERS Passenger information systems Integration of modern networking technologies on European Railways TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS FOR TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE OPERATORS AND FLEET OPERATORS Network Management Fleet Location by Global Navigation Satellite System Freight Resource Management Tools Remote monitoring and maintenance INFRASTRUCTURE FOR VEHICULE OPERATOR (TRAVELLING & GROUND STAFF) Mobile telephone network for railways (GSM-R) On-board applications COMMON ISSUES Transport Telematics, Impacts and Benefits Dissemination and Concertation results Institutional / legal issues Telematics Infrastructure and Technology NEXT STEPS: FUTURE PERSPECTIVES AND FURTHER RESEARCH... REQUIREMENTS REQUIREMENTS FOR NEW PROJECTS Integration of Railway Infrastructure with rail mass transit Information Society Technologies - Systems and Services for Citizens Implications on multimodality (resource and service planning, passenger information, automatic debiting, reservation and ticketing, etc.) Introduction of new automatic procedures Urban Transport and Value-added Services (incl. Tourism) Freight resource management REQUIREMENTS FOR CONCERTATION Common strategy User Forum Collaboration with other areas inside the programme Joint dissemination activities CONCLUSIONS ANNEX 1: ACRONYMS LIST ANNEX 2: DETAILED TASK OBJECTIVES OF THE AREA, AS PUBLISHED IN 4TH FPCALLS iv

5 ANNEX 3: LIST AND SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE AREA PROJECTS, WITH RELEVANT CONTACTS ANNEX 4: TABLE OF PROJECTS: KEY ACHIEVEMENTS IN TERMS OF TECHNOLOGIES /SYSTEMS OR OF APPLICATIONS/ SERVICES DEVELOPED ANNEX 5: LIST OF DEMONSTRATION SITES ANNEX 6: LIST AND DESCRIPTION OF PROJECTS NEW MARKETABLE PRODUCTS ANNEX 7: LIST AND DESCRIPTION OF STANDARDISATION PROGRESS ANNEX 8: BIBLIOGRAPHY - TRACEABILITY NOTES v

6 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY SCOPE OF THE AREA Within the Transport Sector of the Telematics Applications Programme (TAP, 4th Framework Programme for RTD&D, ), the Rail Transport projects have been supporting the development necessary for railways to migrate towards a modern European network. The aim of the Rail TAP-Transport Area has been to meet the growing (and more sophisticated) mobility needs of people in the European Union, contributing to the policy of sustainable mobility and increasing the competitiveness of the European railway supply industry in world-wide markets. Research has focused on topics which will improve the attractiveness of railways, such as intermodality and inter-operability, with the goal of making up for the current under-investment in the railway industry and the increasing technological gap compared with competing modes. Railways must change rapidly and radically in order to survive the next years evolution and the role of telematics tools and modern technologies in this growth strategy is manifest. Furthermore, enhancing what railways have to offer, and consequently encouraging a more balanced use of different services and modes, will be very beneficial to transport in terms of improved safety, efficiency, quality of life and environmental protection. Three levels of user categories were identified in the Area: railway and rail mass transit operators; transport-related professionals and service providers; and travellers. Due to the strictly technical nature of most of the projects, attention was chiefly paid to requirements coming from the first two user groups, leaving room for future research directly addressing passenger needs. Main Achievements Within the Telematics Applications Programme, research in the area of Rail Transport is still in its infancy as previous RTD programmes of DG Information Society (ex-dgxiii) were essentially focused on Road Transport. For this reason, most rail projects of TAP concentrated on very technical issues, which were investigated either through extensive feasibility studies or demonstrated with controlled simulations and in real environments. The main achievements of these projects have been the production of specifications (often smoothing the way for studies that had never been treated so systematically) and the development and testing of prototype equipment. The main results achieved in the Area so far (or the expected achievements, for those projects that are not yet finished at the time of writing this report) can be categorised under the following headings. Services to travellers (information, reservation, etc.) Passenger information systems: these turned out to be a much underestimated need of the community of travellers, and some projects were rearranged so as to address the problem, bringing in modifications and re-focusing some demonstrations. The main aspect addressed by TAP-Transport projects was the improvement of the efficiency of the on-board systems for reserved seats indication and dynamic travel information, including real-time train location. In the future the availability of a suitable train-ground communication link will allow data onboard to be updated in real time. vi

7 Integration of modern networking technologies in the European Railways: a one-year feasibility study was carried out on the use of modern inter-operating technologies for European railway telecommunication networks. It resulted in a series of recommendations on the use of ATM transmission technology together with associated tools, like Virtual Private Networks and Distributed Networks Management to complement the existing networks and form a strong multi-media interoperable telecommunications tool for supporting passenger, freight and the infrastructure business of European railway operators. Techniques and Tools for transport infrastructure operators and fleet operators Teleconferencing Systems for Rail Timetable Planning: in order to respond to today s burdensome and lengthy processes related to timetable planning, an innovative architecture was designed, both in tactical timetable design (yearly/seasonal cycles) and in contingency planning (shorter term forecasts). The technical solution proposed consists of a set of tools based on telematics and information technology, including advanced algorithms and methods of teleconferencing not yet utilised in the transport market. Conflict Detection and Resolution: research in this field was aimed at developing tools for conflict detection and resolution in railway and mass rail transit applications, verifying computer algorithms able to detect traffic conflicts due to perturbations in a timely way and suggest optimised solutions to the dispatchers. The results consist of dedicated automatic tools to be embedded in rail traffic control systems for optimising traffic management in high traffic areas (including complex junctions, stations, main and local lines) and in wide geographic areas, under unpredictable disturbances to existing train schedules. The same tools could be used to analyse the impact of predictable disturbances on train schedules. Circulation conflicts with moving blocks : extending the research on conflict resolution, another project has analysed opportunities and problems provided by Moving Block, instead of traditional signalling systems based on block sections, to cope with instabilities in train-speed profiles occurring on line-sections preceding junctions or pairs of lines with generic reduced speed. Fleet location by use of GNSS1: the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS1) was assessed with a view to making more efficient use of all transport modes, in a multi-modal and multi-operator scenario. Starting from the development of prototype equipment for train position location, based on the self-determination of trains by means of GNSS, research evolved from ground-based train detection to train-borne positioning being reported to ground control centres. Freight Resource Management Tools: a study was made of freight resource management in the field of multimodal transport, its global objective being to optimise the process of multimodal freight transport chains using Advanced Transport Telematics applications alongside some key road corridors in Europe. Remote monitoring and maintenance: specifications were produced and a simple prototype was tested for a new train-ground communication system (ROGATE), which is able to interconnect the on-board network based on the Train Communication Network (TCN) and a ground network based on TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) by means of a GSM radio link. In a final and more complex architecture, this will allow the building of new applications such as remote monitoring and diagnostics of equipment, maintenance systems, freight trains pay-load description and cross-border information, automatic data download from Safety Black Boxes, seat reservation and travel information data upload. vii

8 Infrastructure for vehicle operators (travelling and ground staff) Mobile radio for railways (GSM-R): communication between ground and trains through the GSM-R (an enhancement of the standard GSM technology) will provide assistance to travelling staff and improve the effectiveness of overall railway network operations. GSM-R equipment was installed and tested at three trial sites (France, Germany, Italy), addressing specific railway operations requirements (functional and location dependent addressing, presentation of functional numbers and confirmation of high priority calls) and, in a second phase, advanced telecommunications functionalities such as broadcast and group calls, fast call set up with priority and pre-emption mechanisms. GSM-R will guarantee interoperability as well as integration with the ERTMS architecture. On-board applications: the Train Communication Network (TCN), now International Standard IEC , was tested and validated in some key applications areas, such as passenger trains (passenger information systems), freight trains (automatic brake tests) and mass transit vehicles (integrated systems). TCN-based applications offer advanced train management tools, supporting functionalities like automatic recognition of train composition and orientation, easy integration of equipment from different manufacturers, improved diagnostics based on a standard human-machine interface. The work also included the development of a UIC 556 Conformance Testbed, which has been recently approved by UIC. On-board positioning: the GNSS1 satellite positioning and navigation system has been tested to provide travelling staff with on-board devices to locate the position of the train, without the need for communication with a ground-located system. Concertation Results Concertation among the Rail Area projects led to the identification of a number of themes that need to be considered by future development and co-operation: the establishment of a trans-european User Group relevant to railways; the impact of political, regulatory and financial issues, such as the EEC Directives 91/440, 95/18 and 95/19, 92/44 and 96/48; the definition of a global system architecture encompassing all projects, sub-systems and interfaces; the relation with the ERTMS (European Rail Traffic Management System), especially on the issues of interoperability and interfaces; a common data dictionary for railways, harmonising data structures, data modelling, semantics of the information used in the railway field; standards for data exchange and timetable modelling; stronger support to and participation in the work of standardisation bodies; Human Machine Interfaces; service enhancement through train position location systems, satellite navigation and surveillance; the interface between the on-board bus and the radio link; the introduction of new automatic procedures (e.g. "intelligent wagons", automatic driving); freight management tools; viii

9 multimodality; the integration of Rail Infrastructure with Public Transport based on rail (metro, tram); Information Society Technologies - advanced services for passengers (traveller information, ticketing, reservation, intermodal exchange facilities, tourism). Conclusions The Rail TAP-Transport area has so far provided a significant contribution to the European Programme in terms of specifications, standardisation, development, validation and testing of innovative networks and equipment. It has also played an important role in giving a strong push to the integration of railways in European research, promoting co-operation and exchange of experience, putting forward the need for modern and competitive railways in a multi-modal and inter-operating scenario. Railways have not had such a long involvement as the other modes in the European research programmes, which explains why they are some steps behind and still have to face important technical issues. Although significant progress has been made, there are many issues still outstanding, and several indications and proposals for future development have been put in place, indicating gaps that could not be addressed within the current programme and must be addressed in the near future. Additional telematics research and development is required, for instance giving more emphasis to end-user-driven applications, services for passengers and freight, on-board systems, multimodality, rail mass transit, and so on, as indicated in the present report. ix

10 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 CONTEXT The Telematics Applications Programme (TAP), running from 1994 to 1998, is part of the Fourth Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration of the European Union. This programme has been subdivided in 12 subprogrammes (called sectors) grouped as follows: ΠΠΠTelematics for services of public interest: Transport, Administrations; Telematics for knowledge: Researchers, Libraries, Education and training; Telematics for improving employment and quality of life: Urban and rural areas, Healthcare, Elderly and disabled, Environment; ΠHorizontal RTD: Telematics engineering, Linguistic engineering, Information engineering. The Transport sector (TAP-Transport) is the largest in terms of funding resources. It builds on the results of two former research streams: The DRIVE Programme ( ) and the ATT programme called DRIVE2 ( ). The current Transport Sector enlarges the scope of the former DRIVE programme, as it copes with all the transport modes and all transport infrastructures and not only with road transport. The Transport sector of the TAP is strongly user oriented. The following diagram, which crosses services to users with transport modes, summarises its overall scope. Infrastructure ROAD RAIL WATERBORNE AIR Services Interurban Urban Urban Interurban On water Harbour In flight Airports Service Information A1 B1 C1 D1 E1 F1 G1 H1 to Payments (1) A2 B2 C2 D2 E2 F2 G2 H2 travellers Other services (2) A3 B3 C3 D3 E3 F3 G3 H3 Serv. to shippers Freight intermodality A4 B4 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 H4 Services to Network managt A5 B5 C5 D5 E5 F5 G5 H5 transport Infrastructure infrastructure fee collection A6 B6 C6 D6 E6 F6 G6 H6 operators Other services (3) A7 B7 C7 D7 E7 F7 G7 H7 Service to Fleet management A8 B8 C8 D8 E8 F8 G8 H8 fleet operators Other services (4) A9 B9 C9 D9 E9 F9 G9 H9 Service Information (5) A10 B10 C10 D10 E10 F10 G10 H10 to vehicle Assistance A11 B11 C11 D11 E11 F11 G11 H11 operators Other services (6) A12 B12 C12 D12 E12 F12 G12 H12 (1) = Travel fee payments, Other services paid within the travel (telephone, newspapers, food, entertainment) (2) = Baggage handling, Emergency calls, Reservation, Booking, Business facilities, Entertainment, Recreation, Health assistance, etc... (3) = Infrastructure remote monitoring and maintenance, Emergency services, etc... (4) = vehicle remote monitoring and maintenance, etc... (5) = including meteorological Information (6) = vehicle on-board monitoring and maintenance, etc... Figure 1 Grid for Area Analysis Around 100 projects have been launched within the Transport Sector of the TAP (Telematics Applications Programme). In order to monitor the programme, to analyse its progress as a whole and to report its results, it has been divided into 6 concertation 1

11 areas. Some areas have been further sub-divided, largely because of previous research programmes. The areas are as follows: 1. Traveller Intermodality 1.1 Traveller Information 1.2 Fare Collection and Integrated Payments 1.3 Public Transport Operations 2. Freight Intermodality 3. Road Transport 3.1 Driver Information 3.2 Automatic debiting & Tolling 3.3 Network and traffic management 3.4 Vehicle control 4. Air Transport 5. Railway Transport 6. Waterborne Transport The current document is reporting the progress, achievements and results of the Railway Area. 1.2 OBJECTIVES OF THE REPORT On the basis of the projects achievements and their practical results, the area report will describe the current real output of the programme. As a synthesis, it presents the questions or problems which have been solved, questions currently being addressed, and where the gaps and the problems still to be solved are, as well as new questions to be raised. It describes today s scenario, which is evolving toward liberalisation. The main concerns of railway operators must be to keep pace with the other transport modes, offering modern and enhanced services in a competitive environment that is no longer confined to national borders but must be integrated into a complex multimodal European transport network. The projects involved in the Rail TAP-Transport Area are briefly described, the emphasis being on validation results and expected benefits. Two projects are still ongoing at the time of finalisation of this report: in these cases the descriptions are limited to the progress and expected results to date. The main outcomes of the concertation process are reported, together with a list of common issues and lines of convergence, while suggestions and recommendations for further work are provided in Section 4 of the document, intended as an input to future projects and collaborations. 2

12 2 SCOPE OF THE RAIL AREA OF TAP-TRANSPORT 2.1 USERS The first group of users consists of railway and rail mass transit operators, who manage transport infrastructures and vehicles as their own business. It includes network operators, fleet and vehicle operators and traffic controllers, either working in recently privatised companies or in state-owned companies or employed by public authorities. All of these users are facing new competitive challenges and seeking to make the most efficient use of the systems they are in charge of, within the boundaries of public safety and respect for the environment. The second group of users consists of transport professionals, making transport and travel decisions on behalf of others, and general service providers who integrate transport and travel activities into their businesses. It includes freight shippers, information and communications suppliers, providers of value-added services or backup services, including training and maintenance. The third group of users is composed of the final (end) users, i.e. the travellers, who assess the immediate impact of transport services on their quality of life. They usually need immediate advice on travel decisions, regarding the mode, time and cost, either for their private or business trips, or to send an item of freight or baggage. Whilst in transit, travellers using public and private travel modes on the ground, in the air or on short-sea crossings need to update their travel decisions. The opinions of all these users were regarded as an important element of the work carried out, and proper arrangements for soliciting their views were strongly encouraged, for example through the establishment of specific user groups. The participation of citizens in the programme was accomplished either on an individual basis, with their involvement in validation, or through their representative associations. 2.2 SERVICES The 9 projects in the Rail area of the TAP-Transport sector are listed below: 1011 CITHER-INTER: Communication and Information Technology for Harmonising European Railways - Integration of Networking Technologies for harmonising the European Railways 1022 EuROPE-TRIS: Teleconferencing Railways Information System MAGNET: Multi-Modal Approach for GNSS1 Navigation in European Transport 1037 MARCO: Multilevel Advanced Railways Conflict resolution and Operation 1038 MORANE: MObile radio for RAilway Networks in Europe 1045 ROSIN: Railway Open System Interconnection Network 1063 WELCOM: West East Logistics COrridor for Multi-modal transport 3

13 4003 APOLO: Advanced POsition LOcator 4004 COMBINE: enhanced COntrol centre for a Moving Block signalling system In the grid analysis diagram summarising the overall scope of the TAP-Transport RTD activities, cross-references for projects in the Rail Transport area are highlighted. Infrastructure ROAD RAIL WATERBORNE AIR Services Interurban Urban Urban Interurban On water Harbour In flight Airports Service Information A1 B1 C1 D1 E1 F1 G1 H1 to Payments (1) A2 B2 C2 D2 E2 F2 G2 H2 travellers Other services (2) A3 B3 C3 D3 E3 F3 G3 H3 Serv. to shippers Freight intermodality A4 B4 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 H4 Services to Network managt A5 B5 C5 D5 E5 F5 G5 H5 transport Infrastructure infrastructure fee collection A6 B6 C6 D6 E6 F6 G6 H6 operators Other services (3) A7 B7 C7 D7 E7 F7 G7 H7 Service to Fleet management A8 B8 C8 D8 E8 F8 G8 H8 fleet operators Other services (4) A9 B9 C9 D9 E9 F9 G9 H9 Service Information (5) A10 B10 C10 D10 E10 F10 G10 H10 to vehicle Assistance A11 B11 C11 D11 E11 F11 G11 H11 operators Other services (6) A12 B12 C12 D12 E12 F12 G12 H12 (1) = Travel fee payments, Other services paid within the travel (telephone, newspapers, food, entertainment) (2) = Baggage handling, Emergency calls, Reservation, Booking, Business facilities, Entertainment, Recreation, Health assistance, etc... (3) = Infrastructure remote monitoring and maintenance, Emergency services, etc... (4) = vehicle remote monitoring and maintenance, etc... (5) = including meteorological Information (6) = vehicle on-board monitoring and maintenance, etc... Figure 2 Grid Analysis by Mode scope of the Rail area TAP-Transport projects The projects of the Rail TAP-Transport Area can be mapped into the following sectors. C1-D1 + C3-D3: Services to travellers (information, reservation, etc.): on-board passenger information systems (ROSIN, APOLO); interoperable telecommunication services and virtual private networking for railway telematics, offered to citizens, railway customers and internal users (CITHER-INTER). C4-D9: Techniques and Tools for transport infrastructure operators and fleet operators: teleconferencing systems for timetable planning (EuROPE-TRIS); algorithms for conflict detection and resolution (MARCO); enhanced control centres for moving block signalling systems (COMBINE), fleet monitoring through Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) (MAGNET); freight resource management in the field of multimodal transport (WELCOM); remote maintenance and diagnostics of vehicle equipment (ROSIN); ground-to-train mobile radio offering advanced services (MORANE). C10-D12: Infrastructure for vehicle operators (travelling and ground staff): assistance to vehicle operators (both travelling and ground staff) through mobile radio (MORANE); advanced train management through the TCN on-board network (ROSIN); train position location systems (APOLO). 4

14 2.3 MAIN PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED For many years, with rare exceptions, there was a special relationship at a national level between the railway companies and the railway equipment manufacturers. Whereas a common solution could have been supplied to existing needs, these national synergies gave rise to different technical solutions and generated, in many cases, technical incompatibilities. In the railway R&D projects, undertaken at the European level, one of the principal difficulties resides in the development of common technical specifications, accepted by all the entities involved: railways, industries and national authorities. Furthermore, research should take into account not only the railways in the European Union but also those of the other European countries. 2.4 TELEMATICS APPLICATIONS In the framework of the Transport sector of the TELEMATICS APPLICATIONS Programme, the European Commission aimed to integrate the rail-guided transport modes into the total mobility chain, to support the EU directive 91/440 (and the proposed amendments, see also the section "Institutional / legal issues") on the development of the Community s railways and to promote the revitalisation of the Community s railways. This happened through the development of advanced telematics systems for railway management, for fleet operation and for train-borne control, based on user-friendly and cost-effective approaches, by introducing the modern tools already available in the new information society. 2.5 PART OF THE SCOPE ADDRESSED WITHIN THE PROGRAMME European Railways are experiencing a revolution, due to the progressing liberalisation and deregulation of the market and the increasing need for harmonisation and interoperability. More and more railway transport is expected to play a key role in relieving road network congestion by attracting more and more passengers and freight in future years. However, its potential and competitiveness can be fully exploited only if the necessary service enhancements and innovations are introduced and the transport capacity is optimised. The great challenge is undoubtedly an efficient integration of rail into the whole transport chain. While today s systems are often concentrated on one application or restricted to local applications, as a result of the fragmentation of services inside national railway companies, the objective for the future is to look at railways as one part of an overall complex and coherent transport system, the European transport network. Two documents released in 1996, the White book "A strategy for revitalising the Community's railways" and the MERCER report "Challenges for the Rail Supply Industry", prepared for DGIII (Industry), laid a very strong emphasis on interoperability, intermodality, and open systems, giving a push to the growth and enhancement of railways, which are said to be vital for the European economy. Structural and cultural changes are therefore required within the railway sector, that demand innovative approaches to business and services, consistent with a competitive, market-driven position in the overall transport market. 5

15 In this context, the use of Advanced Telematics Technology can contribute highly to improving the efficiency and the quality of services, or to keeping the same levels of service under increasing traffic flows and without substantial new track construction. It can also help to integrate the railways in a multi-operator and multi-modal transport structure, thus encouraging a more balanced use of different services and modes. Railways must change rapidly and radically in order to survive the next years evolution and the role of telematics tools and modern technologies in this growth strategy is manifest. The activities in the 4 th Framework Programme were intended to support the development of rail during the migration towards a modern European railway network, with the aims of meeting the growing (and increasingly sophisticated) mobility needs of Europe s people. This should contribute to the policy of sustainable mobility and the competitiveness of the European railway supply industry in world-wide markets. Great attention was paid to inter-modality and inter-operability, which are key requirements in the strategy towards full integration in a European intermodal transport system. Because of the lack of similar experiences in the previous DGXIII RTD programmes, the Rail TAP-Transport Area was a beginner and a concertation activity had to be designed for the first time, bringing together people from railway industries, research and operators. This helped them to share results and establish efficient and fruitful relationships, with the goal of solving common issues that still might hamper the evolution of a modern railway network, trying to make up for the current underinvestment in the railway industry and an increasing technological gap compared with competing modes. 6

16 3 PROGRAMME ACHIEVEMENTS 3.1 SERVICES TO TRAVELLERS Passenger information systems Passengers have to be provided with clear and well-organised dynamic information, carved out specifically for their individual needs. It would be easier for passengers if information could be provided in some standard format that can make it easily assimilated across Europe. The requirement for dynamic information for passengers is expressed in all fields of transport. The identification of relevant data, the definition of standard coding rules, the design of ergonomic and user-friendly interfaces, the creation of suitable databases, also applicable to multi-modal exchanges, traffic management and route guidance, are subjects being considered by a number of studies and research projects. A risk exists that uncorrelated systems might emerge in different countries or contexts, making the necessary integration very difficult. Standardisation of protocols and interfaces is therefore fundamental to achieve easy and efficient access to information. Telematics is now providing help in this regard. Although it is recognised that hightech solutions cannot replace the human interaction lying at the basis of efficient passenger information, the general trend towards computerisation and telecommunications in operational control and network administration creates a favourable environment for the selection and distribution of information. After analysing the needs of the community of travellers, many projects found that passenger needs with regard to information systems had been much underestimated. Some projects were consequently rearranged in order to address this problem, bringing in modifications and re-focusing some demonstrations. Two major objectives in using telematics on-board trains for passenger information systems were highlighted in meetings with users, held as part of the ROSIN project activities (UIC Rosin Passenger Expert Group) - to improve the efficiency of the reserved seats indication system and to provide dynamic travel information. The technological solution was to add a central computer, which is able to distribute information along the train by means of the on-board network (TCN), and a number of displays with different capabilities and positions. Data can be uploaded using a GSM radio link, while a GPS position locator can provide the real-time train position. Reserved seating information is extracted from the database of the Central Reservation Agency and transmitted to stationary PCs in decentralised listing offices and stored there on disks. Each train journey has its own disk, with the train number printed on it, which is kept in the listing offices to build a data file for a certain train. In the future, this procedure is to be replaced by radio transmission directly to the train from the central reservation agency. 7

17 The file is sent to the on-board computer, which is in charge of decoding it and updating the indications on the displays above the reserved seats. If the appropriate information is available, the displays can show not only whether a seat is reserved or free, but also the name of the person who made the reservation. The travel information system is articulated in a number of displays: outside train route indicators (located near the external doors, both sides), inside information displays (for saloon coaches only), and inside train route indicators (near the boarding area). They can show static information (train route, train identification and composition) and dynamic information, calculated by means of real-time GPS data and on-board networked data (next stop, expected arrival time, train speed and position). GPS information can also be useful to automatically change the displayed seat reservation, depending on the train position (for passengers reserving seats for a portion of the complete route). These applications (reserved seats indication and dynamic travel information) were demonstrated in October and in December 1998 with the help of two coaches that were kindly provided by DB AG. Besides testing the basic functionalities, the demonstrator also addressed practical problems like power cabling and water-proof outside displays. The system was designed taking into account the possibility of retrofitting existing coaches, which is one of the exploitation objectives of this application. 8

18 In the future, the availability of a suitable train-ground communication link will allow data on board to be updated in real time. The train on-board network will become part of a global network, assuring a seamless and ubiquitous data flow to and from the trains, in different countries. Data available on board will be integrated in real time from data coming from the ground (e.g. traffic control centres) to provide passengers with complete and accurate information (delays, connections and so on). A real-time information system, receiving data from the train position locating system, was also included as one of the components of the non-safety applications analysed by the APOLO project. Passenger information systems are a very important area, and it is felt that these projects, although important, have just cleared the way for future initiatives. They have been exploring some technical aspects, that may provide a technological platform for the development of advanced services, but a more systematic effort is advisable, if possible in conjunction with other areas such as Intermodal Information, to further investigate the above-mentioned issues in all their complexity Integration of modern networking technologies on European Railways CITHER-INTER, a one-year study to investigate the feasibility of using modern interoperating technologies for European Railway telecommunication networks, reached one main conclusion: the ATM transmission technology, together with the associated facilities like VPN (Virtual Private Networks) and Distributed Networks Management might be progressively implemented and used as a strong multi-media interoperable telecommunication tool for supporting the passenger, freight and infrastructure business of European railway operators. COUNTRY A COUNTRY B A-3 A-2 A-1 LAN ATM X.25 Open or secure LAN ATM backbone Open or secure LAN LAN ATM X.25 B-1 B-2 B-3 A-4 ISDN-NB ISDN-NB B-4 A-5 B-5 = Legacy network = New network Another conclusion of the feasibility study was to recommend a pilot demonstrator which could apply the technical results in terms of creating new opportunities to 9

19 expand the existing scenario and to promote, introduce and control new customer and intermodal services based on emerging supports for information and telecommunication interoperability. The pilot application would then offer the opportunity to assess and to consolidate the tools necessary to estimate in real-life conditions the efficiency of IT technologies when used to support operators business (electronic commerce, one-stop shopping) and real-time management. This implies that it is necessary to establish a stronger interrelation between the communication and information support, together with a migration path towards interoperable, more flexible and scaleable networking. A third result offers a paramount opportunity to the European Railways and complements the support for telecommunication interoperability by very efficient and low cost support for information interoperability enabling the wide market penetration of railway services. The concepts of intelligent information brokers and of application applets offer the opportunity to achieve flexibly and at marginal cost the goal of onestop shopping of railway, intermodal and third party value-added services over large geographical areas. CITHER-INTER recommendations address railway decision-makers who provide telecommunication and telematics support for their commercial and exploitation branches (passengers, freight, infrastructure and corporate management services). CITHER-INTER does not directly address services to passengers but suggests new business opportunities, allowing railway operators to offer business services to customers and commercial partners in the inter-modal transport and in the traveller or freight service areas. The interest of the approach consists of the specific combined use of existing commercial products, so that they exercise an integrating and interoperating role in the railway telecommunication and information networks and lead progressively to an open network architecture. This is done at marginal cost, i.e. it improves operations by complementing the existing railway networks instead of requiring their replacement. This opens new business opportunities which enable the railway operators to derive substantial additional benefits from their current business services. Based on enhanced information interoperability and accessibility, new value added services would be created. An example of the applicability to business services is the capability for a railway sales teller, an automatic teller machine or a railway server site, to easily offer and extend to national and international passengers services such as real time purchase and to resell third party services customised to a client s specific wishes. The project reached the following conclusions: ATM is the telecommunication networking technology that offers the best features appropriate for the interoperability of railway telecommunications networks. Numerous offers exist commercially and the technology is expected to last over the long term. Internetworking between existing Wide Area Networks (WANs) and Local Area Networks (LANs) is feasible with off-the-shelf solutions. These 10

20 products support service specific protocols for internetworking over or with ATM or encapsulation via Frame Relay or IP routing; the highest level of interoperability would be the use of a European ATM backbone to interconnect national railway backbones (WANs). The best advantages of ATM, however, are obtained when the technology is used to interoperate not only backbones but also railway legacy access networks and LANs, themselves based on different technologies such as Frame Relay, X25, SNA, PBX, ISDN, Ethernet, Token ring or native Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) LANs; migration from the existing situation to fully interoperable networking, based on this technology, can be done smoothly over longer periods. The lifecycle of the equipment is long and can, therefore, yield good return on investment; while the networking technology itself is largely standardised, ATM network management is currently proprietary, as for many of the other existing networking technologies. However, work is underway to establish standards also in that domain; Virtual Private Networks (VPN) established with ATM technology are powerful and very flexible. They offer the usual and advanced VPN services which interoperate in a national and international environment, including Virtual LANs, and present several accounting and security features helpful for railways. The implementation of voice VPNs between railways can be done directly or through a global operator or several national operators. For data transmission, VPNs relying on ATM are still mostly proprietary, except when features such as permanent virtual channels are established. This is again due to pending standardisation; interoperability of information systems and applications is paramount for expanding the business of the railway operators. It is also complementary to telecommunication interoperability. To enhance intermodality and in order to offer to other railways, transport operators, distributors and to citizens a large choice of railway and value-added services, there is a need for the intelligent search and provision of information to a large market while protecting the sensitive information and commercial initiative of the interoperating players, especially the railway information systems and databases; the concepts of brokers, intelligent agents and application applets are at the basis of Internet, Intranet and Extranet implementations. The project identified possible architectures and scenarios for its use in railway operations and the strategic business benefits intelligent broker servers can offer when they are owned by the railways: one-stop shopping, customer satisfaction, easy introduction of valueadded services by the railways based on their own or third party offers, robustness, security and protection of commercially sensible railway databases, progressive geographic and/or service coverage at marginal cost, a basis for the passage to electronic commerce; the results of CITHER-INTER help to orient the railway requirements for information and telecommunication network support of business services and, thus, to orient the corresponding network procurement and investment decisions. 11

21 3.2 TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS FOR TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE OPERATORS AND FLEET OPERATORS In rail transport, the distinction between infrastructure and fleet operators (directive 91/440) applies to a future scenario where the two entities are separated. For the time being, the two areas are overlapping in most countries and re-organisation is underway. Support of the infrastructure for fleet providers has constituted the main portion of research for Rail Transport in the TELEMATICS APPLICATIONS Programme, contributing to the provision of services to operators of transport infrastructures, as defined in the whole Transport sector of the TAP. Such activities can be summarised as follows Network Management Teleconferencing Systems for Rail Timetable Planning Planning rail transport operations represents a highly complex and burdensome process, both at a national and international level. The traditional procedures for generating timetables are no longer adequate to satisfy productivity demands in the new structure of European railways. Moreover, market responsiveness and customeroriented policies require new flexibility and impose greater timing pressures, while the EU regulations and new rail policies (separating "infrastructure" from "transport" providers) encourage a more competitive railway market, with train operators from various countries competing more and more for line capacity, for passengers and particularly freight passengers. At an international level, sub-optimised marrying of national timetables has been identified as a major reason for excessive border crossing times within the Community, particularly for freight transport services, decreasing efficiency and contributing to lower railway competitiveness. The allocation of infrastructure capacity is therefore becoming a major issue both at a European and national or even regional level. EuROPE-TRIS has developed a system that provides the railways with an innovative architecture to support their modern and expanding needs in planning their operations. It helps railway companies both in the tactical timetable planning process (yearly/seasonal cycles) and in contingency planning (shorter term forecasts, i.e. weekly or daily). Three main modules compose the TRIS system: TCM: Traffic Capacity Management TTC: Timetable TeleConferencing F-TTM: Freight-Timetable TeleMarketing. 12

22 Real-time data (Fiche 407) Electronic Mail (Fiche 450.1) Access-to-Infrastructure (EU Directives) Harmonisation Interoperability PATH DEMAND TCM Traffic Capacity Management TTC Timetable TeleConferencing European (E-TTC) National (N-TTC) F-TTM Freight Timetable TeleMarketing EUROPEAN CORRIDORS Train Operators National Timetable Systems Links with Intermodal Companies Dispatching (e.g. Freightways) TCM: Traffic Capacity Management The TCM supports the capacity managers in the allocation of track paths to train operators. Transport companies submit requests for track access (i.e. train scheduling on a yearly/seasonal basis), and the infrastructure manager responds within a specific time frame respecting certain rules, offering feasible solutions including paths and appropriate path fees. It directly addresses the implementation of principles and procedures introduced by the EU Directives 91/440 and more specifically 95/19. TRIS has developed the TCM design with two technical solutions: TCM-α: Auction and aggregate scheduler, an Internet based application providing access to infrastructure via an auction system; TCM-β: Intermediate Scheduler, which uses more sophisticated user interfaces and algorithms to provide a more detailed stage for traffic capacity management or train scheduling; it can also stand-alone or use downstream the so-called high-level scheduler. While the former idea still appears some way ahead for adoption by European railways (with a few exceptions, such as residual or spot market capacity), the latter approach is more likely to be introduced in the short term. The TCM module is able to produce feasible schedules that can look very similar to the finalised schedule. It can make technical and economical evaluations of paths, in order to assess their market value and thus give some indications for their final pricing (access to infrastructure fees). In the current version, TCM has been developed for double-track lines; as part of the exploitation work, further implementations are being developed to extend its ability to manage other line characteristics and constraints. It is based on a server/client architecture and uses advanced heuristic algorithms that can deal with long distance rail corridors (e.g km) and find solutions quickly (seconds or minutes). The demonstration showed that the TCM system can dramatically improve the accessto-infrastructure and capacity allocation process, smoothing the procedures for path requests and assignment between Infrastructure Management and Train operating companies, which is in line with the EU policies for the railways transport market. In 13

23 conjunction with the teleconferencing system (TTC), TCM can provide a real breakthrough in the way European railways traditionally manage the lengthy and incremental timetable construction by successive layers of transport segments (international, passenger, freight, regional and other types of traffic). The new system can help more concurrent and synchronous processing and better meet market demand. Furthermore, the TCM concept could reasonably be applied to other transport sectors with similar constraints in access-to-capacity management (e.g. airport slot allocation). TTC: Timetable TeleConferencing The TTC system links the planning departments of transport operators and infrastructure providers, in order to automate the traditional process of Timetable Conferences, assisting planners to reach agreements about final timetable schedules. The TTC is based on multimedia, low-cost (personal computer) videoconferencing equipment which has not been utilised in the transport market before and would dramatically improve the process of timetable development, which today is costly and demanding, as it requires the displacement and physical presence of railway representatives. The TTC receives the planning result of the TCM, and refines it until full technical validation and detailed schedules are reached. In this task, it is linked to the Timetable Design System in use, if there is any, or alternatively it can work in a stand-alone mode for basic functions. Before the finalisation of the timetable, there might be the need to re-run the TCM function to arrange some technical details or further agreements, or to allocate remaining slots or enable spare capacity management. TRIS developed two functional reference models for TTC, operating on European or National requirements: the European-TTC (E-TTC), to make bordering Infrastructure Managers co-operate on international corridors, and the National-TTC (N-TTC) to allow the detailed design of the timetable on national lines. The system is therefore very flexible and can greatly improve the work of traditional timetable conferences, the technical definition and overall design process of timetables, reducing definition times and increasing overall production quality (e.g. verification checks, data validation and timeliness). At the moment its main constraint is that its cooperative work is limited to bilateral (two person) sessions, which was implied by the original requirement and low-cost architecture of the system. F-TTM: Freight-Timetable TeleMarketing. The F-TTM provides a set of tools to support the rail traffic co-ordination centres and facilitate the contingency planning procedures. It assumes that the theoretical, or reference, timetable has been constructed by a previous tactical planning process. One of its main tasks is to allocate slots for unscheduled or special freight trains and to cope with varying traffic demand. Contingencies also imply such occurrences as line breakdowns, strong delays and incidents which may require re-pathing or alternative routes. The allocation of infrastructure at very short notice could also imply access-toinfrastructure rulings (e.g. spot market) and the consideration of economical factors. Moreover, when addressing long distance corridor operations, real-time data about 14

24 running trains can also be an input to re-planning activities. The final output of the function is the contingent scheduling or dispatching of new trains in response to market needs or operational needs. Although the freight market is the major potential client for this activity, the study also took passenger trains into account. The F-TTM was structured into six project modules that correspond to specific functions assigned to traffic co-ordinators or controllers. They are: TRAIN (Train Real-time Automatic Information), real time data exchange about positions of cross-national trains; REMUS (Rail Electronic Mailer Unified System), i.e. mailing services between traffic co-ordination centres or dispatching messages; VIDES (Videoconferencing Dispatcher Electronic Set), including videoconferencing and multimedia services (white-boarding and messaging exchange); ITHACA (Inter-modal Train Haulage As Cargo Arrives), managing information exchange between traffic co-ordination centres and inter-modal nodes; MIDAS (Mining Data Server), i.e. information acquired from rolling stock data management (legacy) systems; ODOS (Operational Dispatching On-line Scheduler), supporting the coordinator/dispatcher in validating path feasibility in contingent time windows. These functions were demonstrated as a tool-set made of loosely connected objects and not as a fully integrated architecture. Full integration will depend on the architectures available in different countries. It should be noted that all these core functions represent the backbone of a traffic management room, the system architecture of which is not within the scope of this project. In the future, the F-TTM concept should be better integrated and take account of: UIC standards more recently edited (which are still subject to final approval); implementation of Freightway policy, where a robust and widely accepted business model is still missing. TRIS is part of a larger initiative within the Telematics Applications Programme, EuROPE (European Railways Optimisation Planning Environment), which comprised three projects, focusing on topics of infrastructure planning (TRIP) and resource optimisation modelling (TRIO). TRIP represented a study of a more strategic nature, regarding the design of a business model for rail infrastructure management, analysing the costs and capacity of railway lines. The Train scheduling algorithm developed within TRIS (TCM) was used to implement the Line Capacity methodology required by TRIP. TRIO aimed at demonstrating a more general Business Process Reengineering architecture for the railway planning system, including TRIS and other advanced operations research methods to optimise specific resource-oriented planning tasks. This allowed the prototype integration between TRIO and TRIS within a common workflow architecture. 15

25 EuROPE Project ACCESS TO INFRASTRUCTURE AND USAGE POLICIES TRIP ACCESS TO INFRASTRUCTURE MARKET ENTERPRISE CONTROL SYSTEM PROCEDURES AND METHODOLOGIES TIMETABLE DEFINITION PROCESSES TIMETABLE TELEMARKETING AND DISPATCHING PROCESSES TRIS PLANS REAL-TIME TRAIN MANAGEMENT AND SAFETY SYSTEMS TRAIN SERVICES WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT TRIO DATA & APPLICATIONS PLANNING OPTIMIZERS TIMETABLE PLANNING CONTINGENCY PLANNING TRIS validated and demonstrated the sub-systems in a number of test sites in Italy, the UK, Spain, Norway, Austria and Switzerland. Following the evaluation of EuROPE- TRIS, a number of recommendations were provided, and work is underway in different countries to exploit the results of TRIS and to make its results available to other projects within the new research programme. Some project modules (videoconferencing, data exchange and messaging facilities) will be used within the OPTIRAILS II project, which aims to build a pilot linking dispatching workstations in different countries (Freightway-oriented application) Conflict Detection and Resolution Several factors affect the regularity of train traffic, which constitutes a huge, dynamically changing network. Delays may vary from a few seconds to several hours, but any exhaustive search procedure over the space of possible traffic management plans is likely to be prohibitively expensive in terms of computational time. It is here that the need arises for advanced optimisation algorithms, that combine feasible traffic management plans in real-time, and then propose a range of alternatives to the dispatcher. The mission of the MARCO project was to develop tools, algorithms and technology for Conflict Detection and Resolution in a wide range of real time applications within railway and metro networks (including complex junctions, stations, main and local lines) under unpredictable disturbances to existing train schedules. Its main results are: a set of tools for Conflict Detection and Resolution; specific Man-Machine Intefaces (MMI), developed in order to support the verification activities. 16

26 During the lifetime of the project secondary objectives had to be achieved too: a complete scenario related to User Requirements for the Conflict Detection and Resolution aspects; an integrated telematic structure, open to the external world; a comparative study among different algorithms for conflict resolution. In the latest generation of Traffic Management Systems for railways, some advanced functions, such as automatic route setting, train-graph and train-describer, have been introduced to assist dispatchers in their daily work but leaving them the duty of intervening when perturbations arise in the system. The increasing traffic together with the need to control larger and larger areas with a single dispatcher, are now pushing the suppliers to offer a series of automatic functions to improve system efficiency, providing dispatchers with tools to solve potential conflict situations due to traffic perturbations and letting them intervene only in the case of serious problems. At present, the systems tend to include functions that automatically solve low to medium complexity problems. If the system is not able to find a solution without violating any imposed rule, it will give suggestions to dispatchers to help them to make a decision. This is Conflict Detection and Resolution (CDR). Referring to a multi-layered Supervision System for Traffic Control, the MARCO project had to improve the Conflict Detection and Resolution (CDR) subsystem for: Global Area Networks (GAN), which is the top level of Railway Systems; High Traffic Areas (HTA), the medium level of Railway Systems, which include complex junctions, stations and local lines; The underground level, developed for its most complex operative situation (terminus). MARCO tested a number of algorithms (Branch and bound, Branch and cut, Random search, GENET, Intelligent search, Distributed intelligent search, Simulated annealing, Genetic algorithms) on realistic test cases for each of the applications. Taking into account a number of indicators (resolution and computing performances and conflict management capability), it turned out that for the two junction demonstrators, two different variants of greedy rule-based methods (Intelligent search and Distributed intelligent search) proved to be the best. They are fast, and always resolved all the conflicts present in current test scenarios. Greedy rule-based methods imitate in spirit the decision process of a human train dispatcher, causing minimum changes to the regular timetable. For the optimisation kernel of the Milan Metro demonstrator, they used an approach that combined genetic algorithms, a simulator and a heuristic postprocessor for regulation of the headway pattern. 17

27 The GAN optimisation kernel was based on the Distributed intelligent search approach, already experimented with in the Milan Junction Demonstrator, and improved and specialised to cope with the problems introduced by GAN. According to the chosen approach, the search for a good solution to a traffic problem was accomplished by means of the integration between local solving strategies and global optimisation criteria. The algorithms were then tested using four different demonstrators. Each of them included train movement simulators and traffic simulators to verify the validity of the proposed solutions. The test cases were selected with the help of skilled dispatchers from ATM, NMBS and VR, who also contributed to the verification and evaluation reports. The CDR subsystem had to be verified in well defined contexts in Italy, Belgium and Finland: 18