Emery, D. (2016)

Operational Temporary Speed Reductions on the ETCS-DMI

Computers in Railways XV, Madrid, Spain

Dealing with congested railway area becomes an important topic in railway operation management. Significant efforts are made to develop Driver Advisory System (DAS) in connection with the trackside Train Management System (TSM). Many advantages are expected from smoothing train dynamic speed profiles: timetable resilience, significant reduction of both the energy consumption and the wear and tear and, finally, positive impacts on the comfort for passengers. Today, on one hand, only a few Centrally Guided Train Operation Systems (CGTO) are already in operation on European major railways. On the other hand, the European Train Control System (ETCS) spreads rapidly. Such combination offers a great opportunity to promote CGTO system using the ETCS-DMI opportunities. The present paper describes many alternatives of CGTO using either the "Monitoring" area or the "Supplementary Driving Info" area or the “Planning" area or the “Speed Info” area; or a combination of them on the ETCS Diver Machine Interface (DMI). Some of them give only advices or guidance but the some of them indicate operational temporary speed reductions (O_TSR) to be strictly obeyed. Historical research, current experiments and dispatching concepts in bottlenecks areas militate in favour of the compulsory character of temporary speed limits due to congestion. Then, the last alternative presented here should be more deeply examined.