Assuring rail’s timely performance today and every day

Rail infrastructure in many areas is already straining to keep up with demand, requiring that operators find ways to boost utilization and performance without compromising safety. With budgets stretched tight and a body of regulation that provides little room for financial flexibility, operators need to find new ways to work more efficiently within very narrow boundaries.

This paper considers the challenges operators face in maintaining that balance and the steps they can take to maintain and improve performance. It further highlights the impact that digital technology can have on rail operation performance, including examples from current digital transportation initiatives.

Punctuality’s paradox

Whether the trip is a daily necessity or a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, everyone who steps on a train shares the same expectation — to enjoy a safe, affordable, comfortable journey that gets to the intended destination on time.

Safety and punctuality are the key metrics by which all modes of transportation are judged, but in rail they seem to be especially noted. When they measure up, operators use them as a key marketing tool to attract customers. In Australia, Queensland Rail aims for more than 95 percent of peak period services arriving on time. When they don’t, operators can expect unhappy customers, tough questions and the looming threat of more oversight. In fact, the precise movement of transit in some regions is so important that a train which leaves a little early can create problems for customers as much as a train that arrives behind schedule.

Ensuring punctual performance may not sound like a lot to ask, but it is a difficult thing to achieve day after day. Dozens of factors affect the ability of rail providers to strike the right balance between on-time performance, safety, comfort and convenience. Bad weather. Wear and tear. Maintenance and repair. Wandering animals or misguided vehicles on the tracks. Blown debris that becomes tangled in overhead electrical supply lines. It’s a wonder, given the vastness of rail infrastructure, the complexity of its machinery and the system’s exposure to adverse elements (both natural and man-made), that any train ever arrives anywhere on time. And yet trains usually do — a testament to the planning and investments made by leadership and the hard work of rail operation employees.

In other instances, punctuality can conflict with safety considerations. For example, heavy rains or fog could cause delays that affect on-time performance and cargo delivery deadlines. And in the interest of passenger safety and secure cargo, there are times railways must set speed limits on certain rail segments or perform emergency repairs, which can also slow down trains.

Despite these challenges, there are steps rail operators can take to introduce tangible improvements to rail system performance.

Focusing on the customer experience

Maintaining a perfect schedule isn’t possible, but improving the overall customer experience is something that rail operators can do to mitigate the impact of delays and build trust with passengers. In Britain, train punctuality will be measured to the minute, a significant upgrade over the old standard of 5 to 10 minutes. Further, punctuality will be measured throughout a train’s journey, rather than just at the destination. These efforts are designed to encourage a greater emphasis on punctuality, to benefit the entire transportation network.

Fares are another area where improvements can and should be made. Operators must further look at steps to streamline the ticket-buying process to help passengers make the best ticket choice for their needs, whether they are daily commuters or visitors traveling for pleasure.

Communicating schedule changes rapidly can be as important as arriving on time. Simply giving passengers more information gives them more control and greater ability to manage delays. Improving the customer experience can also mean helping passengers become more aware of their responsibilities — emphasizing safety protocols at stations and on trains that can help crowds move more smoothly and with fewer incidents.

Infrastructure investments must continue to be made. Many system operators across Europe are building regional control centers with digital signaling that can help drivers navigate unfamiliar routes. Rail systems are also rolling out new rail stock, including hybrid trains that run on diesel and electric that can still run if overhead lines go out. Many of these special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) also integrate with the technology used by local authorities, financial institutions, railways and passengers to provide new services.

In conjunction with these upgrades, rail operators must accelerate the transition from analog to digital. The application of digital technology can help rail organizations extract the most efficiency from the system and infrastructure (new and old) while improving safety. Digital investments can help railways participate in a connected transportation ecosystem, providing customers with more convenience, comfort and information that will improve the experience. Precision scheduling enabled by digital rail management also creates more opportunities for freight rail to compete with other modes of transportation that offer predictable schedules.

Other factors also complicate the efforts rail operators are making to improve or maintain performance. Finding the money to make investments and improvements is one challenge. Complex legislation resulting in dozens of fare pricing options creates confusion for consumers and unpredictable revenues for railways. Further complicating matters are changing consumer trends and preferences. Even as urban populations increase, the revenue impact created by a growing contingent of stay-at- home workers is being felt at the turnstiles.

Pinpointing high-impact activities with analytics

Advances in the way algorithms and data analysis software are deployed will help railroads take advantage of the massive amounts of data that a rail system can provide, which in turn creates new techniques for enhancing safety, reliability and customer service. One of the ways it can deliver an immediate impact is by helping railway maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) teams identify the most critical needs of the system. Many of these have a direct effect on the ability to deliver safe and reliable on-time performance.

Track utilization. By measuring utilization, maintenance teams can focus on the parts of the rail network that are most heavily traveled. It makes no sense to repair or replace track that’s rarely used or lightly traveled. They also use the analytics to determine which times are best for the maintenance crews to do their work, reducing interruptions and delays.

Power consumption. Tracking power consumption enables the railways to keep tabs on how much electricity they use, where they can save on electricity and whether the power companies are billing them fairly. The railways can then charge operating companies for actual usage consumed by locomotives. It also helps them quickly pinpoint outages, so workaround strategies can be developed, minimizing disruptions and improving on-time performance.

Crossing analytics. In the United States, there are 210,772 railroad crossings and about 130,727 of these intersect with public roads. In the United Kingdom, there are about 6,000 on-level crossings. Using analytics, railways can determine how often trains travel through the crossing safely, plus accident rates and types. Such analyses have resulted in the redesign of some on-level crossings and the closing of a number of crossings, thus improving safety for rail users, pedestrians and drivers.

Passengers. Analytics give railways data on passenger traffic, including which routes are most heavily traveled, and conversely, which are less traveled. This helps the rail companies decide where to put their maintenance efforts and determine whether they are providing the right mix of retail and passenger services at each station.

Leveraging back-end technology to improve safety and punctuality

Analytics offer rail operators the chance to gain some “quick wins” through short- term projects that have an immediate measurable impact. For the longer term, investments in rail infrastructure can yield even greater returns. Dozens of rail systems throughout Europe, from Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) to ERS Railways with freight rail, are using back-end technology to monitor and manage rail systems. For example, SBB has deployed Rail Control System (RCS), a system that generates real-time schedules, calculates future train movements and manages passenger connections in stations. The data output serves as a basis for optimized customer information, improved incident response, monitoring, cost accounting (for example by improved energy efficiency) and quality control.

The system improves operational performance on the Swiss railway network by providing SBB with the following benefits:

• A networkwide forecast of train movements for several hours into the future, which serves as a single source of truth for all staff involved in railway operations. This provides both the infrastructure manager and the railway undertakings with important information and optimal support to make critical decisions at the right time.
• Faster and more effective response to incidents and service interruptions. Improved monitoring enables faster decision making and better communications. This enables SBB to respond to incidents immediately, minimizing the effects of disruptions and ensuring that as few passengers as possible are affected.
• More energy-efficient railway operations. The introduction of a reliable operations forecast provides the basis for further automation. A connected driver advisory system supports train drivers in driving their trains in an energy-saving way and without risking conflicts with other trains in their path.
• Optimization of operations through collected data and statistical evaluation. Through data analytics, SBB can develop models based on past traffic patterns, thus predicting delays more effectively and improving overall crowd management.
• Real-time timetable information available everywhere and on demand for staff, passengers and third parties. Everyone using the railway or working in the system now has updated schedules that reflect realistic expectations of on-time performance.

Digital investments revitalize infrastructure, improve performance

In Belgium, the railway offers the public an important alternative to traffic-clogged streets. As a result, traffic managers at Infrabel, the country’s rail infrastructure company, have faced an ever-increasing travel volume, having to track — on a daily basis — 4,500 trains transporting 750,000 passengers around the country. Given the size of Belgian rail network — 4,000 kilometers in a total country area of 30,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of the U.S. state of Maryland) — this is a challenge in one of the densest rail environments in the world.

Trains were controlled by a large number of personnel. But without a centralized system capable of calculating and visualizing the impact of incidents and signalers’ decisions, traffic managers were limited in their ability to react quickly and counteract disruptions.

To improve on-time performance, to further increase rail utilization and to improve worker productivity, Infrabel decided in 2013 to renew its traffic management system landscape and to begin a massive multiyear transformation program. The organization sought to implement a modern traffic management system that would help to realize its strategy of centralizing 71 signal boxes into 11 traffic control centers and increase overall operational performance in general.

Infrabel’s management decided that the Swiss RCS was the system needed to achieve these goals. The system was aligned with Belgian state requirements and, following thorough testing and integration, Infrabel switched off its legacy traffic management solution. Four hundred Belgian signalers started managing the dense national network with RCS. The transition was smooth and realized on time.

Today, traffic managers in Belgium have real-time train locations and a reliable 2-hour forecast of train movements at their service. By using easy drag-and-drop operations, they can actively plan, replan and reroute the trains on their network. Signalers can now see and resolve conflicts well before they occur, update timetables and communicate changes instantly.

On the heels of the successful RCS implementation, Infrabel implemented a broader company-wide transformation program, believing this would help the company avoid replacing more than 1,800 employees expected to retire over the next decade.

From an IT perspective, the new system represents a leap forward. RCS runs on a scalable architecture. Designed for the high performance a busy rail system requires, the system is capable of processing up to 240 train-location messages per second. Availability is guaranteed, for example, by ensuring that the system has no single point of failure. Altogether, RCS has a minimum availability of 99.8 percent and, in the unlikely case that a failure does occur or a restart is required, automatic failover initiates within 10 seconds.

Keeping promises

With population density on the rise and growing concern about sustainability, it’s clear that rail systems will be critical components of tomorrow’s transportation. And it just so happens that rail is entering a new era of innovation driven by data and digital technology, which can make that possible. The selective application of analytics, advances in digital train management, improved communication with customers, and connections to a larger transportation ecosystem all offer rail the chance to grow and prosper.

Much of what’s to be changed will be invisible to the daily rail passenger. As far as commuters and travelers are concerned, they’ll experience a higher degree of on- time performance and more advance notice of schedule changes. And that’s all they really wanted to begin with. Simple, right?

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