By Thameem Kamaldeen
As we strive to combat climate change and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, it’s crucial to take a comprehensive look at our lifestyle and transportation habits. The world over, railway systems have emerged as one of the most sustainable means of mass mobility. However, to truly rise to the challenge of climate impact, we need to encourage more individuals to swap their personal vehicles for public transport.
The key to promoting this shift towards sustainable mobility lies in enhancing the capacity and efficiency of our existing public transport systems. Digitalisation offers an affordable solution to this, eliminating the need for costly construction projects like new tunnels or tracks to accommodate additional trains.
Digitalisation paves the way for a swift transition towards transport systems that are more efficient, seamless, and sustainable. By leveraging digital signalling systems to control train speed and braking, we can operate more trains at higher speeds and with shorter intervals. This not only increases capacity but also ensures shorter and more reliable journeys for passengers, making the benefits of rail digitalisation a global boon.
By enhancing the passenger experience through increased capacity, fewer delays, and quicker journeys, digitalisation can convince people to opt for collective transport over personal vehicles. Today, thanks to optimised driving and improved train-to-train communication, the gap between metro trains is being reduced, allowing more trains to operate on a single line simultaneously and thereby increasing the overall line capacity.
The flexibility of this technology has significant implications for urban development, which relies heavily on the ability to efficiently transport large numbers of people into and out of city centres, both now and in the future. Intelligent urban signalling systems like have been instrumental in the expansion of Automated Train Operation (ATO) in urban networks.
For example, Paris’ RER A – one of Europe’s busiest suburban lines, leverages these digital breakthroughs to enable more passengers to be transported while consuming less energy. Similarly, many Indian metro networks are leveraging the power of ATO to increase efficiency and allow a greater number of trains to run safely in peak hour traffic. ATO can offer savings of 20-25% to operators and is a way for them to optimise the productivity of their networks without making costly changes to infrastructure. Onboard technology, including sensors, software, and artificial intelligence, plays a crucial role in this strategy.
Beyond cost and efficiency gains, digitalising mainline and urban networks also brings maintenance advantages. A digitalised system facilitates predictive maintenance, where the system software detects equipment nearing failure, enabling maintenance teams to intervene before any issues arise. This reduces the overall workload of the maintenance staff, allowing them to focus on other tasks and boosting the overall operational efficiency.
In the coming decade, the intelligence of both mainline and urban signalling systems will be further centralised, primarily in software. The transition from trackside equipment to onboard software will continue to gain momentum as operators enjoy the benefits of enhanced efficiency, safety, cost savings, and environmental performance. Advanced mathematical models and data analysis will be used daily to address scheduling issues, minimise disruptions, reduce human errors, increase train capacity and availability, while improving passenger experience.
Data can also help operators adapt to real-time changes in their networks and simulate and predict future passenger flows. By collecting data from technologies such as signalling systems, flow management systems, and centralised operational control centres, operators can understand the impact of various events – from pandemics to daily influences like weather, sports matches, and traffic – on passenger flows.
Advanced AI solutions can then propose strategies for reducing congestion and reallocating resources during these events. By predicting surges and adapting to them in advance, operators can ensure a smooth journey for passengers.
The rail industry is increasingly becoming a data and software-centric sector. While data primarily ensures overall monitoring of the railway asset, and AI automates previously manual tasks, the combined expertise and experience of rail engineers, maintenance experts, and data scientists are equally vital for interpreting results and facilitating predictive maintenance.
It is however a misconception that data analysis and AI alone can address technical challenges. The combined knowledge and experience of rail engineers, maintenance experts, and data scientists are equally important for interpreting the data, finding solutions, and facilitating predictive maintenance.
The challenge before every city today is to ease congestion while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In India, this challenge is particularly severe as climatic conditions in winter leads to severe dip in air quality. Governments are increasingly encouraging citizens to adopt public transport and are making significant investments in developing Metro rail networks in cities like Delhi NCR, Lucknow, Kanpur and Agra among others.
The solution to these challenges can be found in a mobility approach that positions rail as the backbone of urban transport systems, interconnected with a diverse range of first- and last-mile solutions with a digital network acting as its neural core.
The author is the Managing Director – Signalling and Infrastructure at Alstom Transportation
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the original author. These views and opinions do not represent those of The Indian Express Group or its employees.
