Engineering news
New traffic management technology being introduced by Network Rail will 'improve performance', supplier Thales has claimed.
Network Rail, which manages Britain's railways, announced last week that it had awarded £28.8 million of contracts to Thales to deploy traffic management technology at the organisation's Cardiff and Romford operating centres. Network Rail is consolidating more than 800 signal boxes into 12 such “state-of-the-art” control centres around the country. These central hubs will use enhanced data for real-time planning, conflict prediction and resolution, and provide more accurate information to staff and passengers.
Thales's traffic management system (TMS), known as Aramis, already manages more than 60,000 trains a day. In Austria and Germany, it manages the national fleet. In Portugal and Israel the system is also used. It allows operators to monitor train services and predict potential problems, before they affect services.
Thales's Network Rail account director, David Taylor, said: “Traffic management is about using technology to improve the performance and utilisation of the rail network in order to provide a more reliable service to passengers and freight operators.”
Network Rail is consolidating signalling while also introducing traffic management technology to boost performance, Taylor said. The two go hand-in-hand, he added. “Aramis predicts problems and suggests solutions to those problems before there is a train delay. Today operators and signallers sometimes don't know about a problem until it's too late to do anything about it.”
Aramis is used to control more than 35,000 train journeys a day in Germany. Thales's system was up against technology two rivals in initial trials. “It was a very comprehensive procurement exercise which goes back several years,” Taylor said. Sixty-three companies initially expressed an interest in providing Network Rail's TMS.
Network Rail said its network of 800 operating locations had “ageing and inconsistent equipment and different ways of working”. It is consolidating running the network at its rail operating centres at existing locations including Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow. It will construct new centres at Basingstoke, Manchester, Romford, Rugby, Three Bridges and York. “The development and implementation of traffic management technology adds the systems to complement the physical construction and investment taking place at these locations,” said Network Rail.