In the beginning of the ‘90s, the European railway industry, with support from the EU institutions, engaged in creating a common railway signalling system. Over time, ERTMS emerged as one of the most successful European industrial projects and is now on its way to making railway transport one of the most competitive transport modes.
Although railway transport is, by far, the safest, fastest and lowest CO2-emission mode of transport, it is, however, confronted with one of the most striving problems, that of cross-border traffic, which is complex and difficult to manage and most of the time affects the competitiveness of this means of transport. Cross-border traffic is doubled by the differences of gauge, electrification systems, administrative procedures, that make interoperability difficult and increase operation costs. The existence of more than 20 signalling systems in Europe is a major obstacle to international railway transport. Indeed, every country or supplier has the tendency to develop its own signalling system in the past, which resulted in a variety of systems in Europe and sometimes even in one single country. Needless to say, all these systems were not interoperable.
For example, Thalys trains running between Paris, Brussels, Cologne and Amsterdam have to be equipped with seven different types of train control systems. That is why railway transport experts advocate for a unique train signalling and control system on the European railway network. ERTMS perfectly fulfils all these functions. As a unique signalling system, it was designed to be fully interoperable across the EU. This means that any train equipped with ERTMS may run on any line, as long as the trackside equipment is also fitted with ERTMS, shows the latest information published on the official website ertms.com. “ERTMS is a necessity for an efficient railway network integrated in the European Union. On Pan-European Corridor A (Rotterdam-Genoa), extraordinary efforts for the implementation of the control system have already been made to answer this need”, Karel Vinck, the European Union’s coordinator for developing the ERTMS, declared.
What does interoperability means when dealing with the ERTMS?
In fact, there are two aspects: on the one side interoperability refers to a geographical interoperability between countries and projects: a train fitted with ERTMS may run on any other ERTMS-equipped line. On the other hand, it also refers to a technical notion of “interoperability between suppliers”: a train fitted by a given supplier will be able to run on any other trackside infrastructure installed by another supplier. This opens the supply market and increases competition within the industry. CER supports the development of railway cargo transport corridors in Europe. According to a report elaborated by McKinsey consultant for CER on the development of railway cargo transport corridors, investments of EUR 145 Billion until 2020 could increase the railway transport capacity by 72% on the six ERTMS railway cargo freight corridors, representing 34% of the volume of freight shipped in Europe. The market share of railway transport could increase from 17% to 23%, Johannes Ludewig,
Executive Director CER, points out. There are a few examples of cross-border traffic with trains fitted with ERTMS. The Vienna-Budapest line is running with ERTMS since 2003, while connections between Belgium and the Netherlands, and France and Spain, are foreseen to be running shortly. In June 2009, a new ERTMS (Level 2) High Speed Line was opened in Belgium between Liege and the German border, as a first step to the opening of the whole line between Belgium and Germany. In the future, the number of cross-border connections will increase as the investments will be gradually coordinated on ERTMS corridors with the support of the European Commission.
By choosing a modern signalling system such as ERTMS, railway transport operators can easily increase train frequency. Instead of building another line or extend trains or platforms, operating trains with ERTMS represents the easiest and cheapest method and affects the development of railway capacity on a line or network less than other similar systems. A typical example of a high-capacity ERTMS lines is given in the Swiss case of the Mattstetten – Rothrist line, which operates in level 2. An estimated 242 trains- both freight and passengers run on the line everyday, at speeds of up to 200 km/h. The headway between trains has been reduced to less than two minutes (110 seconds). In case of lines with mixed traffic (passengers plus freight), a capacity increase of up to 25% was reported. Many other examples may be found, such as the High Speed Rome-Naples Line where 33 runs per day are made on a 216 km line at speeds of 300km/h, with headways of less than 5 minutes. “The Commission’s target consists in the establishment of international corridors providing operators with an efficient and quality transport infrastructure in order to make rail transport the first option for long distance transport modes”, Antonio Tajani, former European commissioner for transport declared. A dedicated European deployment plan was adopted in July 2009 to ensure that EU countries equip their network in the same timeframe – this plan covers more than 25,000 km of Pan-European corridors and specific railway lines which will have to be equipped with ERTMS by 2020.
by Elena Ilie
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