Europtirails (formerly OPTIRAILS II) - European online optimisation of international traffic through rail management system
Overview
Background & policy context:
Freight and Passenger need for mobility and flexibility across Europe is increasing. The ever more frequent train services in the future must be handled, while at the same time maintaining punctuality. In order to guarantee trouble-free operation, information on thousands of trains and millions of data movement data per day have to be collected and dispatched to all involved European Infrastructure Managers and to Train Operating Companies via different channels, such as Extranet or Internet – in real-time.
The creation of trans-European traffic management facilities is a crucial element towards the achievement of a real integrated rail network within the Community – a much needed stepping stone for the implementation of competitive international rail services.
Therefore, the development and field validation of a monitoring and supervisory facility aiming at the management of railway traffic along major European rail corridors (e.g. a freight freeway) was included as one of the three mainstream activities of the ERTMS programme.
The EUROPTIRAILS concept addresses the extension of the current ERTMS developments, centred on the command /control (ERTMS/ETCS) and telecommunication (GSM-R) systems, towards the higher-level traffic management layer (ETML).
In this setting, EUROPTIRAILS enables real time, online supervision of European rail traffic. EUROPTIRAILS covers a given corridor of railway lines running between Rotterdam and Milan and assists national railway operators in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Italy.
Objectives:
Cross-border supervision of rail traffic is of critical importance to the European Union. A unique and harmonised information and supervision system is therefore needed to establish an integrated European rail network. Real time, cross-border information would enable operators to ensure connections run smoothly and bring long-lasting improvement to traffic flow along the European north-south axis. EUROPTIRAILS operates existing national platforms and manages their integration into the system using only the latest in railway security techniques
The intention was to develop a facility which evolves around the concept of a One-Stop-Shop (OSS), providing a surveillance and communication platform with a two-fold objective:
i) Decision support to the different national and regional traffic management centres (TMC) for a more efficient and cost-effective management of international rail services; and
ii) Seamless exchange of operational and commercial information that can uphold the implementation of wider trans-European customer-oriented business strategies.
From a functional point of view the system was not aimed at replacing the national traffic management facilities but rather at creating an “information highway” layered on the existing systems, linking them and enabling the transformation of the national facilities into a network of collaborating agents. This allowed reaching the key goals stated above without entailing any major disruption to the existing legacy systems.
In this context, EUROPTIRAILS' goals were to:
- Check in real conditions the system functionality based on the OPTIRAILS concepts developed in former rail research projects under the EU RTD FP.
- Perform on site measurement of the added-value of an OPTIRAILS system for real time traffic management.
- Define possible institutional system/service governance structures.
- Assess the results of full-fledged system operation.
- Provide information to decision makers in terms of best practice for the implementation of traffic management facilities on other European rail corridors.
Methodology:
EUROPTIRAILS' goals are to operate existing national platforms and manage their integration into one system using the latest in railway security techniques.
The new system's first priority was the real time management (Information Model) of railway traffic inside and outside the borders of the participating countries. It was able to alert operating authorities of certain events, delays for example, at any given moment. Furthermore, all the data was recorded and accessible for analysis at any time (Monitoring Model). Such analyses provided accurate information about the critical points of the railway network, which were then drawn on to design train timetables. The national railway companies involved with the project were to define a set of shared procedures, referring in particular to response times and emergency measures (Path Assembly Model). In this setting, EUROPTIRAILS' methodology was built around a three-pronged modelling
1. Information Model: Real Time information
The Europtirails Consortium developed a comprehensive rail transportation solution which included:
- Collection and exchange of railway traffic data from/with the European railway regulation systems
- Real time train traffic data - such as contracted timetable, forecast, running advice, delays - via Internet
- Customisable filtering functions
- Delivering freight and passenger train information
- Supporting the standard UIC data exchange
2. Monitoring Model
The Monitoring Model of Europtirails aimed mainly:
- To provide recording data about the running of Trans-European passenger and freight trains.
- To provide detailed information concerning EUROPTIRAILS trains on the whole network.
- To measure and analyse, with generated reports, the quality of services in order to improve it and to determine responsibilities of the operations processes
3. Path Assembly Model
The Path Assembly Model helps the European Infrastructure Managers to re-schedule a route by:
- Considering the available line capacity.
- Considering the trains currently running.
- Proposing a new path, if a deviation is necessary.
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