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Purpose At the US passenger stations, train operations approaching terminating tracks rely on the engineer’s compliant behavior to safely stop before the end of the tracks. Noncompliance actions from the disengaged or inattentive engineers would result in hazards to train passengers, train crewmembers and bystanders at passenger stations. Over the past decade, a series of end-of-track collisions occurred at passenger stations with substantial property damage and casualties. This study’s developed systemic model and discussions present policymakers, railway practitioners and academic researchers with a flexible approach for qualitatively assessing railroad safety. Design/methodology/approach To achieve a system-based, micro-level analysis of end-of-track accidents and eventually promote the safety level of passenger stations, the systems-theoretic accident modeling and processes (STAMP), as a practical systematic accident model widely used in the complex systems, is developed in view of environmental factors, human errors, organizational factors and mechanical failures in this complex socio-technical system. Findings The developed STAMP accident model and analytical results qualitatively provide an explicit understanding of the system hazards, constraints and hierarchical control structure of train operations on terminating tracks in the US passenger stations. Furthermore, the safety recommendations and practical options related to obstructive sleep apnea screening, positive train control-based collision avoidance mechanisms, robust system safety program plans and bumping posts are proposed and evaluated using the STAMP approach. Originality/value The findings from STAMP-based analysis can serve as valid references for policymakers, government accident investigators, railway practitioners and academic researchers. Ultimately, they can contribute to establishing effective emergent measures for train operations at passenger stations and promote the level of safety necessary to protect the public. The STAMP approach could be adapted to analyze various other rail safety systems that aim to ultimately improve the safety level of railroad systems.

In times of ever stronger awareness of environmental protection and potentiation of a beneficial modal split, the railway sector with efficient asset utilization and proper investment planning has the highest chance of meeting customer expectations and attracting new users more effectively. Continuous increase in railway demand leads to an increase in the utilization of railway infrastructure, and the inevitable lack of capacity, a burning problem that many national railways are continually facing. To address it more effectively, this paper reviews available methodologies for railway capacity determination and techniques for its enhancement in the recent scientific literature. Particular focus is given to the possibility of increasing railway capacity through signalling systems and installing the European Train Control System (ETCS). The most important relationships with segments of existing research have been identified, and in line with this, the directions for a potential continuation of research are suggested.

Rail traffic control systems are undergoing an important transformation. ERMTS/ECTS, CBTC, PTC and other train control systems based on radio communication are being deployed in different countries. These systems meet the high safety requirements for passenger traffic, and cover from congested urban areas to high-speed trains. However, there is a set of facilities, such as ports, dry ports, facilities for the repair and maintenance of trains, logistic centers, mines, etc., whose trains, that only carry freight, circulate in a controlled environment at a low speed. These facilities have low safety requirements. For them, present commercial systems become too expensive, so that, in most cases, railway traffic is still handled manually. This paper presents a system to aid in the exploitation of rail traffic for this type of facilities, called SFPS (Seville Ferro-Port System). SFPS presents many of the features of the most advanced traffic control systems, but incorporates innovations based on Information and Communications Technologies to reduce costs. To this end, train location is based on a satellite global positioning system, physical signs are replaced by virtual ones, displayed in an On-Board Unit, and communication is almost entirely wireless. SFPS has been in a trial phase since March 2016, covering part of the railway facilities of the Port Authority of Seville, with satisfactory results.

Class I railroads in North America collectively invested USUS$11.2 billion to comply with a U.S. federal mandate to deploy positive train control as a form of train protection system. This amount d...

End-of-track collisions at passenger terminals have raised safety concerns because of their potentially severe consequences such as infrastructure and rolling stock damage, service disruption, and even casualties. As introduced in the previous study sponsored by the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration, the implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC) systems at passenger terminal stations could potentially prevent end-of-track collisions. As the second phase of that project, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the proposed concept of operation via quantitatively identifying the safety benefits, incremental costs, and operational impacts associated with PTC enforcement on terminating tracks. The benefit-cost analysis indicates that the safety benefits may exceed the incremental costs over a 20-year period under specified circumstances and assumptions. In addition, the preliminary results disclose that the operational impact in PTC enforcement should be negligible, except for the rare occurrence of wayside interface unit (WIU) failure or radio failure in the Interoperable Electronic Train Management System (I-ETMS)-type PTC system that would result in a stop well short of the targeted point and potentially delay both onboard passengers and inbound/outbound trains. Both benefit-cost analysis and operational impact assessment methodologies are implemented in a decision tool that can be customized for different terminals with heterogeneous infrastructure and operational characteristics and be adapted to other transportation modes.

With installation of positive train control (PTC) on many U.S. rail corridors, Class I railroads may soon leverage these investments in communications network infrastructure to implement “advanced PTC” systems incorporating moving blocks. Train control with moving blocks can benefit operating strategies that dispatch fleets of multiple trains running at minimum headways. On single-track corridors with passing sidings long enough to hold multiple trains, fleeting may increase the efficiency of train meets, reduce train delay, and yield incremental capacity benefits. Alternative single-track configurations with fleet-length sidings at double the spacing of conventional single-train sidings can facilitate these operating strategies while minimizing additional track infrastructure and associated capital and maintenance costs. To investigate the operational synergies between moving blocks, fleeting, and longer but less frequent sidings, Rail Traffic Controller software is used to simulate and compare the delay performance of train operations on representative rail corridors for different combinations of fleeting strategy, train control system, siding configuration, and freight traffic composition. Operating fleets in conjunction with moving blocks produces the lowest overall train delay in specific cases of low schedule flexibility and heterogeneous traffic. With more efficient meets, moving blocks and/or fleeting primarily benefit low priority trains that typically wait for opposing traffic during train meets. Such incremental line capacity benefits have short-term financial consequences as they allow additional capital investments in double track to be deferred. Knowledge of train delay performance under moving blocks and fleeting will aid railway practitioners evaluating investments in advanced PTC systems and track infrastructure expansion.

On August 20, 1969, two Penn Central commuter trains collided head-on near Darien, Connecticut, killing four and injuring 43. That tragedy 45 years ago began the NTSB's call for development and implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC) systems. Since then, the NTSB has issued almost 50 PTC-related safety recommendations and has included PTC on its Most Wanted List every year from its inception in 1990 until enactment of the RSIA. Unfortunately, despite some progress in the four decades since that original recommendation, PTC preventable train collisions still occur. In this paper, we identify human and organizational factors that affect a successful PTC implementation and evaluate the application of High Reliability Organizing (HRO) characteristics in the implementation of this safety system.

Requirements for regulatory impact analysis in the United States vary greatly. Executive branch regulatory agencies in the United States are required to conduct regulatory impact analysis before is...

To enable the smart technologies on the freight railcars, such as the global positioning system (GPS), real-time train condition monitoring and positive train control, a cost-effective power source is required. This paper presents the design, modeling, in-lab and onboard field-tests of an electromagnetic energy harvester for freight railcars. The proposed harvester with a mechanical motion rectification (MMR) mechanism can scavenge the vibration energy that is usually dissipated or wasted. An analytical model considering the train-harvester interaction is established to analyze the dynamic characteristic and predict the performance of the harvesters on different tracks at various train speeds. An in-lab bench test is carried out to experimentally validate the harvester model and evaluate the characteristics of the proposed energy harvester. The experimental results show that an average power of 14.5 W and 9.2 W are achieved respectively for the harvester using 66:1 and 43:1 gearhead under typical suspension vibrations recorded on an operational railcar at 90 km/h. An onboard field test is also performed using the harvester with 43:1 gearhead on a test track, which yields a peak phase power of 73.2 W and an average power of 1.3 W at 30 km/h. Both the in-lab and onboard test results indicate that the proposed energy harvester could continuously generate an amount of power useful for the implementation of smart technologies to improve the operational safety on the freight cars.

A series of end-of-track collisions occurred in passenger terminals because of noncompliant actions from disengaged or inattentive engineers, resulting in significant property damage and casualties. Compared with other types of accidents, end-of-track collision has received much less attention in the prior research. To narrow this knowledge gap, this paper firstly analyzes the safety statistics of end-of-track collisions, then develops a fault tree analysis to understand the causes and contributing factors of end-of-track collisions. With the objective of mitigating this type of risk, this paper discusses the potential implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC) for the passenger terminal. This paper primarily focuses on the enforcement of the two most widely implemented systems, the Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES) and the Interoperable Electronic Train Management System (I-ETMS). For each implementation scenario, the Concept of Operations (ConOps) is proposed that depicts high-level system characteristics for the proposed PTC system enforcement at stub-end terminals. Ongoing work is being carried out by the authors to fully evaluate the cost-effectiveness and operational impacts of enforcing PTC in terminating tracks to prevent end-of-track collisions.

This paper systematically investigates the efficient real-time control design for automatic train regulation (ATR) of metro loop lines subjected to frequent minor disruptions. To describe the dynamic evolution of the trains periodically operating on the loop line, a train traffic model related to the departure time is proposed based on a state-space equation, where the number of the station increases from circle to circle. Under the frequent minor disruptions, a dynamic optimal control model is developed to determine the ATR strategy to improve the punctuality and the regularity of the metro operation with the safety and control constraints. To solve the formulated optimal control model with the updated information, a real-time control algorithm based on a model predictive control approach is designed, which splits the original optimization problem into a set of convex quadratic programming problems, which can be numerically calculated efficiently and satisfy the real-time control requirement. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In the United States, a train moving onto a terminating track at a passenger terminal relies on the train engineer’s operation. Currently, there are no mechanisms installed at the U.S. passenger terminals that are able to automatically stop a train before reaching the end of the track if an engineer fails to do so. The engineer’s actions determine whether the train will safely stop before the end of the terminating track. Thus, incapacitated or inattentive engineer operation would result in end-of-track collisions, such as the New Jersey Transit train accident at Hoboken Terminal in 2016. Currently, PTC enforcement is not required in passenger terminals. In an ongoing project tasked by the Federal Railroad Administration, we study the cost-effectiveness and operational impact of possible PTC enforcement to prevent end-of-track collisions. Specifically, a Concept of Operations (ConOps) was developed to outline the proposed plans to implement two of the most widely used PTC types, namely the Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES) and Interoperable Electronic Train Management System (I-ETMS). This paper describes in-field testing of the ConOps in ACSES-type terminal. In the planned field test, a train equipped with one locomotive and at least one passenger coach would be tested on platform tracks in a selected passenger terminal. These are three major testing components, which are test equipment, test track, and recorded information for each test sequence. Firstly, in terms of equipment, a traffic cone will be placed on the track to simulate a bumping post. In ACSES system, two sets of transponders are programmed to require a positive stop within a specified distance and mounted to the cross ties at specified positions. Secondly, a yard track will be used to test the feasibility of this exercise at the beginning. Upon successfully completing the test multiple times, a series of tests will also be made on the studied platform track. Thirdly, each test run should record the distance from the head end of the test train and the traffic cone for each test run. In addition, ACSES system should also record the information on the ACSES display as it passes the first and second transponder set, respectively. Overall, the field tests presented in this paper, along with previous work in benefit-cost analysis and operational impact assessment, can contribute to an assessment of the proposed PTC implementation at stub-end terminals in the United States in order to effectively and efficiently prevent end-of-track collisions.

High-risk organizations are inherently complex and depend on the latest technologies to survive and function properly. Therefore, introducing new technology to such an organization is inevitable. Studies show that the installation of new technology always involves some changes to the organization and its members. The railroad industry, as an example of a high-risk and safety-critical organization, strives to avoid catastrophic events, while performing dynamic tasks under strict time constraints, operating technology posing large-scale physical hazards. High Reliability Organizations (HROs) are a subset of high-risk organizations designed and managed to avoid such accidents. This paper discusses the adaptation of HRO principals as part of the implementation process for the Positive Train Control (PTC) technology in a safety-sensitive railroad organization.

Background: As high-speed rail and other transportation technologies are moving forward and gaining funding in the United States, the push for MagLev is not receiving the necessary support that would make it a viable alternative in the near future. Major changes in the approach to implementing MagLev could make a better case for it, specifically for carrying freight. One alternative that has been considered in the past is the modification of existing freight railways to support MagLev. For this to be economically feasible and practical, such a solution has to be able to support both conventional freight trains and MagLev freight. Aim: The successful application of Partially Magnetically-Levitated Freight (PMLF) technology achieved by integrating superconducting MagLev technology with current railroad design and operations. Methods: A MagLev freight system that is envisioned to use existing rail routes must be designed to be compatible with the existing railway infrastructure. To accomplish this, every component utilized by the railroads must be examined in detail to determine if and how it could be affected by the proposed PMLF. In addition, components that will need to be modified for PMLF operation must undergo a retrofit design and testing process. The design scope must also include an examination of all existing tasks and activities that are being performed by the railroads such as track maintenance and repair. Any procedures that affect or are affected by the addition of PMLF will need to be modified. Finally, superconducting MagLev technology must be optimized and advanced for application to PMLF. Opinions and Discussions: The dual use of railway lines has substantial cost advantages when compared to building new dedicated MagLev freight corridors. In fact it could make the entire proposition very appealing if proven to be technically feasible. However, there are certain limitations and concerns that would cause policy makers to reject such a proposal unless such obstacles can be shown to be temporary and non-critical. Essential rail installations such as switches are presently difficult to modify in a way that would ensure reliable functionality for both MagLev and conventional freight trains, and grade crossings pose safety risks. It is difficult to envision the tremendous leap forward of merging MagLev with existing freight rail lines when much more basic technologies such as positive train control are not even fully implemented. Consequently, it is a challenge to advance MagLev in the United States where new dedicated freight corridors are considered to be cost-prohibitive and dual use railway lines pose uncertainties that railroad companies simply do not want to solve. However, there is one more solution has not been considered that would allow a MagLev freight train to navigate on existing railway infrastructure without disrupting traditional rail utilization. This solution is a partially magnetically-levitated freight train. Results: After reviewing the fundamental components, systems and operations of the railways in the United States, it will be feasible and practical to introduce magnetic levitation technology to assist in moving freight on existing rail routes. PMLF trains will be able to take advantage of magnetic levitation on sections where the track has been upgraded to allow its use and much higher speed while still being able to travel on unmodified sections with the same speed as traditional trains. Conclusion: Modifying existing freight rail with magnetic “quasi-lift” technology is a much lower cost alternative to building an entirely new MagLev infrastructure. This alternative will provide very important benefits including enhancing safety in the rail industry. In its first phase of implementation, the proposed PMLF system will levitate a significant portion of the weight of the train but still utilize the existing steel rails for traction and guidance. The most evident advantages of this approach include reduced wear on rail and other supporting elements, and a significant reduction in friction and energy use. Locomotives, freight cars and all other components could be made lighter and travel speeds will increase dramatically due to less impact and other effects. Later phases of implementation will focus on magnetic traction and guidance. The acceptance and success of this partially levitated system will eventually lead to fully levitated freight transport technology. Sometimes it is necessary to take smaller steps to achieve the desired future.

Nationwide implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC) is underway in the United States. PTC is designed to prevent certain types of train accidents. This paper provides a review of the policy development, operational impact, cost-effectiveness, and critical issues associated with industry-wide PTC implementation. Challenges include interoperability, technological complexity, and limited implementation resources. Emerging critical issues include train operations at restricted speeds, railroad cyber-security risk, broken rail prevention in PTC territories, en route failure of PTC, grade-crossing protection, and opportunities for leveraging PTC-generated big data that require more research from academia, government, and industry.

Based on the mature energy-saving strategy of a single train, the optimization of multiple trains' trajectories is studied. A cooperative control model is formulated with the utilization of the regenerative energy considered, which is used to calculate the total energy consumption of an electric subway system under various energy-saving control strategies. Taking the cooperative operation of two trains within the same section of an electrical system as an example, the front one adopt the optimal driving strategy with four modes of movement, which are the maximum traction, cruising, coasting, and the maximum braking by sequence. The latter is controlled by the strategy with four movement modes (mentioned earlier) and five movement modes (namely, the maximum traction, cruising/coasting, the maximum traction, coasting, and the maximum braking), respectively. The minimum energy consumption under different departure headway is calculated by using a heuristic algorithm. It turned out that the optimal energy-saving control strategy can be obtained with the departure headway given, and an energy-saving control strategy corresponding to the minimum energy consumption can be worked out too. The proposed energy-saving strategy can reduce energy consumption by 19.2% at the most.

In modern rail transport systems, balises are widely used to exchange track–train information via air-gap interface. In this paper, we first present the vulnerabilities on the standard balise air-gap interface, and then conduct vulnerability simulations using the system parameters that were specified in the European Train Control System. The simulation results show that the vulnerabilities can be exploited to launch effective and practical attacks, which could lead to catastrophic consequences, such as train derailment or collision. To mitigate the vulnerabilities and attacks, we propose to implement a challenge–response authentication process in the air-gap interface in the existing transport infrastructure.

Communication-based train control (CBTC) systems use wireless local area networks for information transmission between trains and wayside equipment. Since inevitable packet delay and drop are introduced in train–wayside communications, information uncertainties in trains' states will lead to unplanned traction/braking demands, as well as waste in electrical energy. Moreover, with the introduction of regenerative braking technology, power grids in CBTC systems are evolving to smart grids, and cost-aware power management should be employed to reduce the total financial cost of consumed electrical energy. In this paper, a cognitive control method for CBTC systems with smart grids is presented to enhance both train operation performance and cost efficiency. We formulate a cognitive control system model for CBTC systems. The information gap in cognitive control is calculated to analyze how the train–wayside communications affect the operation of trains. The Q-learning algorithm is used in the proposed cognitive control method, and a joint objective function composed of the information gap and the total financial cost is applied to generate optimal policy. The medium-access control layer retry-limit adaption and traction strategy selection are adopted as cognitive actions. Extensive simulation results show that the cost efficiency and train operation performance of CBTC systems are substantially improved using our proposed cognitive control method.

The development and testing of automation technologies have been increasingly fast moving. For the public transportation industry, these new technological innovations raise many possibilities and many questions. To what degree will automation replace the need for human drivers and even some maintenance workers? Which occupations will be affected the most? What skills will be in demand, and what will become obsolete? What is the social impact for the reshuffling in the labor market, and what can we do to make the transition less disruptive? The author begins this chapter with an analysis of the landscape of the future transit operating environment. Overall ridership has declined in recent years. Transit is facing increasing competition from emerging passenger transportation models, most prominently Transportation Network Companies. Some transit agencies are venturing into new models of service provision, such as “microtransit.” And new technologies are being tested and implemented in many aspects of transit operations and maintenance, such as driverless shuttles and buses, drones, predictive maintenance and Positive Train Control. To examine the impact these new developments may have on the workforce, the author starts by examining the standard Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment projections for key frontline occupations. She then synthesizes findings from three recent research reports to gain additional insights on the subject. These analyses demonstrate that automation can result in significant benefits in terms of increased productivity, improved safety, and convenience of lives. However, they can also substitute existing work activities human workers currently carry out. Workers with low skills and low wages tend to be affected more by technological substitution of labor, and the transferability of their existing skills is also more limited. The author makes several recommendations for ongoing assessment of the impact of new technology on the future of transportation workforce, mitigation of the potential employment disruption, and preparation for the new skills demands from emerging technologies. The industry needs to significantly increase workforce training investment, establish labor–management partnerships proactively to provide assistance to displaced workers, integrate training on new technologies into pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs, and collect data to inform policies and decision making.

Emerging communication-based train control techniques are a critical foundation for automatic or semiautomatic train operation for guaranteed safety, line utilization, operation efficiency, and energy saving toward intelligent rail transportation systems. Multiple-train cooperative control encounters great challenges from train control, communications, interval coordination, and uncertainties in operational environments. This paper introduces cooperative control methods and corresponding stability criterions for multiple trains under moving-block signaling systems. Two coordination scenarios are considered, and corresponding control algorithms are proposed, and their stabilities are established using Lyapunov and invariant-set theorems. The proposed controllers hold the minimal computation complexity, i.e., only one parameter needs online tuning by virtue of an ingenious parameter estimation technique. The methodologies utilize the information of “nearest neighbor trains” through onboard sensors and train–train (T2T) communications but guarantee global deployment and performance of the multiple trains queuing. The control abilities of the algorithms under predecessor following and bidirectional architecture modes are analyzed and demonstrated to be effective via simulation studies.

The European Train Control System (ETCS) is the leading signaling system for train command and control. In the future, ETCS may be delivered over long-term evolution (LTE) networks. Thus, LTE performance offered to ETCS must be analyzed and confronted with the railway safety requirements. It is especially important to ensure the integrity of the ETCS data, i.e., to protect ETCS data against loss and corruption. In this article, various retransmission mechanisms are considered for providing end-to-end ETCS data integrity in LTE. These mechanisms are validated in simulations, which model worst-case conditions regarding train locations, traffic load, and base-station density. The simulation results show that ETCS data integrity requirements can be fulfilled even under these unfavorable conditions with the proper LTE mechanisms.

High Speed Railway (HSR) provides its customers not only safety, security, comfort and on-time commuting, but also a fast transportation alternative to air travel or regular passenger rail services. Providing these benefits would not be possible without the tremendous growth and prevalence of wireless communication technologies. Due to advances in wireless communication systems, both trains and passengers are connected through high speed wireless networks to the Internet, data centers and railroad control centers. Railroad communities, academia, related industries and standards bodies, even the European Space Agency, are involved in advancing developments of HSR for highly connected train communication systems. The goal of these efforts is to provide the capabilities for uninterrupted high-speed fault-tolerant communication networks for all possible geographic, structural and weather conditions. This survey provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art and future trends for wireless technologies aiming to realize the concept of HSR communication services. Our goal is to highlight the challenges for these technologies, including GSM-R, Wi-Fi, WIMAX, LTE-R, RoF, LCX & Cognitive Radio, the offered solutions, their performance, and other related issues. Currently, providing HSR services is the goal of many countries across the globe. Europe, Japan & Taiwan, China, as well as North & South America have increased their efforts to advance HSR technologies to monitor and control not only the operations but also to deliver extensive broadband solutions to passengers. This survey determined a trend of the industry to transition control plane operations towards narrowband frequencies, i.e. LTE400/700, and to utilize concurrently other technologies for broadband access for passengers such that services of both user and train control systems are supported. With traditional technologies, a tradeoff was required and often favored train control services over passenger amenities. However, with the advances in communication systems, such as LTE-R and cognitive radios, it is becoming possible for system designers to offer rich services to passengers while also providing support for enhanced train control operations such as Positive Train Control.

Ultrawideband (UWB) technology provides relatively high throughput at short distances by utilizing low-power pulse transmission as a coexisting radio service in the C/X-band portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. This paper aims at validating the suitability of UWB technology for emerging Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The expectation in the industry is that e-health applications that entail Body Area Networks, Smart City applications dealing with autonomous vehicles and precise location, Positive Train Control in the context of rail transportation, and other near field communications will become prevalent in the near future. This review article provides a description of UWB technology in the IoT environment, as well assessing its technical limitations.

Radio propagation prediction for passenger rail operations using sub-UHF frequencies can be a complex matter. While propagation models and data containing terrain and obstruction information can be used to predict radio coverage, unique methodologies are required to accurately plan and implement rail communication systems. Federally-mandated Positive Train Control (PTC) system requirements rely on consistently available wireless communications, thus the imperative need to accurately design and construct radio networks to fulfill critical requirements.Copyright © 2018 by ASME

This report summarizes the Canadian Rail Research Laboratory’s (CaRRL) findings after performing an in-depth investigation into the potential safety benefits gained from the introduction of enhanced train control (ETC) technology to the Canadian railway environment.

Safety, capacity, and timely schedules are some of the most crucial objectives in railway operations. Positive train control (PTC) is a concept whose goal is to improve the safety and efficiency of railway operations by using advanced information technologies. Information technologies such as active communications enable the use of a dynamic headway policy, which can increase the track capacity and improve dispatching efficiency in addition to improving safety. In this paper, we propose a dynamic headway system for PTC based on active communications, which we integrate with a dynamic dispatching model in order to improve track capacity and safety in railway operations. We use a simulation model of a rail network in southern California to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach. The simulation results of different scenarios show reductions in train delays of at least 55% and reductions in travel time of at least 35% when using the dynamic headway versus using a fixed headway.

Global System for Mobile Communications-Railway (GSM-R) is the current standard for railway voice and data communication. It provides railway-specific voice services, such as railway emergency calls (RECs), as well as the European Train Control System (ETCS), which offers in-cab signaling and automatic train protection. Despite these features and services, GSM-R has major shortcomings. Therefore, alternative technologies are being considered to replace GSM-R and become the next-generation railway mobile communication network.

On 6 August 2014, Alstom and Huawei announced a long-term evolution (LTE) fourth-generation (4G) pilot for the metro market to demonstrate the performance of a multiservice broadband radio network for communications-based train control (CBTC). Alstom has been working on LTE since the technology has been available from the telecom industry. This pilot will use Huawei's LTE technology following the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the two companies in April 2014.

Communication-based train control (CBTC) is an automated train control system using bidirectional train–ground wireless communications to ensure the safe operation of rail vehicles. Due to unreliable wireless communications and train mobility, the train control performance can be significantly affected by wireless networks. Although some works have been done to study CBTC systems from both train–ground communication and train control perspectives, these two important areas have traditionally been separately addressed. In this paper, with recent advances in cognitive dynamic systems, we take a cognitive control approach to CBTC systems considering both train–ground communication and train control. In our approach, the notion of information gap is adopted to quantitatively describe the effects of train–ground communication on train control. Moreover, unlike the existing works that use network capacity as the design measure, in this paper the linear quadratic cost for the train control performance in CBTC systems is considered in the performance measure. Reinforcement learning is applied to obtain the optimal policy based on the performance measure, which includes linear quadratic cost and information gap. In addition, the wireless channel is modeled as finite-state Markov chains with multiple state transition probability matrices, which can demonstrate the characteristics of both large-scale and small-scale fading. The channel state transition probability matrices are derived from real field measurement results. Simulation results show that the proposed cognitive control approach can significantly improve the train control performance in CBTC systems.

The safe operation of Chinese Train Control System Level 3 (CTCS-3) is of great significance, particularly with respect to the increasing operational speed and expanding railway networks of the Chinese high-speed railway system, which has drawn deep concern from both customers and strategic makers. A hazard and operability (HAZOP) study has been recognized as an effective systematic examination to identify any potential problems existing in various industrial processes or operations. This paper presents a process of applying a HAZOP study to identify the hazards of a CTCS-3 onboard system for the first time, which is composed of two major parts: system models and hazard identification on the examination session. To better reflect the structure and functions of a CTCS-3 onboard system, the following models are developed, i.e., a reference model, a function hierarchical model, a state diagram, and a sequence diagram. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the HAZOP study, hazard identification on the basis of the functions of the CTCS-3 onboard system and a scenario of temporary speed restriction is considered and employed. The results indicate that existing hazards can be dug out at express speed, which allows the relevant actions to be proposed and implemented to prevent the hazards from spreading to a wide range in the whole CTCS-3 onboard system.

Cars, plane, boat, train and all future vehicle will be smarter and will provide more safety and comfortable transportation A lot of transport research are dedicated to response to one question: How can accidents be avoided?. The collision avoidance systems based on infrastructure-less communications for Automatic Identification System (AIS) for maritime transportation, Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System / Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (TCAS/ADS-B) for aircraft, and the Car-2-Car communication system (C2C) for road transportation, are deployed or in an advanced stat of development. We find no satisfactory solutions to avoid collision in the case of Train-to-Train intersection or in case of Train-To-Car (railroad crossing). Collisions with train are generally catastrophic, as they cause severe damage to life and property. The cause of train collisions is frequently attributed to a "chain of unfortunate circumstances" or "human error"The rail industry has been quite active in applying IT to rail transportation applications. While there are numerous examples of the application of advanced technologies to improve the safety and efficiency of rail transportation, we present in this paper an overview of two system developed to avoid trains collisions: Positive Train Control (PTC) and Railway Collision Avoidance System (RCAS).