Performance comparison between the Dutch and European signalling system at bottlenecks

Performance comparison between the Dutch and European signalling system at bottlenecks

Huurman, N.T.J.

Koops, H. (mentor)

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Transport & Planning

2013-01-25

In this research a comparison has been made between on one side the Dutch signalling system with ATB-EG train protection and on the other side the European signalling system ETCS Level 2. The minimum feasible headway times at bottlenecks for both systems have been compared. A selection has been made of the 22 most relevant train sequences on six often occurring infrastructure layouts. For each layout, the positioning of signals (for ATB) or block limits (for ETCS) has been sought that leads to the lowest feasible headway time for between one and four train sequences. To enable fast calculation and comparison of the headway times at different signal positionings a spreadsheet calculation model has been developed for both signalling systems. In 15 of the 22 train sequences, the European system ETCS L2 yielded a shorter headway time than the Dutch system ATB-EG. The improvements ranged from 1,1s to 21,3s, which corresponds to savings of up to 21%. In the other 7 train sequences, the headway times found in this research for ETCS L2 were higher than those that could be reached in the Dutch signalling system when applying the appropriate signal positions. When averaged over all 22 train sequences, ETCS L2 gives a 4,5% reduction of the headway time. When only averaging the 16 train sequences that don’t involve freight trains, the reduction more than doubles to an average of 9,3%. The main differences between the two signalling systems that contribute to the better performance of the European system are the fact that the braking curves are block-independent, train-dependant and speed-dependant and that there is a very low minimum block length. The research presented three types of limitations that could prevent signals from being placed on the exact location where they would be needed (level crossings, overhead section breaks and neutral overhead section breaks) and investigated the sensitivity of the found minimum headway times, which showed that the values found for ETCS L2 are much more robust and that the required block limit positionings contain much more flexibility. The results from the research were applied on the corridor Weesp – Almere Oostvaarders, showing again that ETCS would bring more buffer time increases and require less infrastructure adaptations. To improve the accuracy of future studies comparing the Dutch and European signalling systems, focus should be put on obtaining more certainty about the ETCS braking curves of the representative Dutch passenger rolling stock.

ATB-EG
ETCS L2
bottleneck
headway time

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:c10c6078-3863-41db-8b30-005f5d21aeae

2013-01-30

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Huurman, N.T.J.