Traffic mana­gement for rail

The motivation of digitization in railway operations management is multi-faceted. Customers will benefit from higher train frequencies, fewer disturbances, more safety, better connectivity, improved customer information and lower ticket costs. New technologies in the areas of interlocking, localization and communication enables more precise monitoring of train movements and more efficient track utilization, as resource reservations can be dynamically updated.

ELCA has provided services and advanced solutions for the rail industry since 1990. We built classical rail stock planning, timetables and resource management tools and systems. We also provide services for digitizing the railway operations with a focus on algorithmically supported, optimized and integrated traffic management system. A novel TMS takes advantage of precise real-time information to react quickly to deviations from the plan. Whenever a deviation occurs, algorithms adjust the speed profiles and routes of the trains to the new situation. The new plan is communicated to the interlocking system and to the locomotive driver or potentially autonomous driving unit. The ability of this closed-loop system to react quickly and automatically increases system stability even when reducing reserve buffer times in the timetable. In this way, the capacity of railway infrastructure can be increased without construction of new tracks. The algorithmic TMS further allows increasing efficiency in the timetable planning process. Multiple traffic scenarios can be computed and evaluated in a short time.