The Green Deal has the objective of transforming the EU into a climate-neutral and circular economy. The railways, being environmentally friendly and energy-efficient, play a key role in the shift towards a sustainable and climate-resilient EU. By 2030, train traffic is expected to have grown 40%. Only by digitalising the European railways can such growth be managed.
Today’s railway infrastructure features quantities of mechanical and electrical trackside equipment requiring cables for power supply and data transfer. The future of train traffic is digital and wireless. New technologies will change the rules completely. In a few years’ time, digital advancements will allow rail infrastructure operators to dispense with most of their trackside equipment and create a centralised digital train control and traffic management system. Any remaining trackside equipment such as axle counters will be wireless. Not having to dig for cables will not only substantially cut the cost of implementation (approximately 15 billion euro’s) and maintenance, but more importantly, will speed up the roll-out of ERTMS in Europe by 20 years.
ProRail needs to install around 20.000 axle counters in The Netherlands in order to implement ERTMS. Axle counters are systems used in railway signalling to detect the clear or occupied status of a section of track between two points. Axle counters are a core component for train detection purposes and therefore train traffic control. ProRail is only allowed to use axle counters that meet a certain safety level. In the case of train detection, axle counters need to meet the highest safety integrity level, called “SIL4”. Basically, it means a SIL4 axle counter may only fail once every 10.000 years. Traditional axle counters are wired and can therefore be SIL4 certified.
Up to 4G, wireless technology could not meet the requirements as set out by infrastructure managers like ProRail, to have axle counters SIL4 certified by using wireless technologies. In 2021, ProRail and Rail Connected (a sister company of All Connected B.V.) have jointly determined that 5G - in principle – is able to meet these high SIL4 requirements as a data carrier. 5G is expected to have great latency features, slicing options and being ultra-low power. Telecom operators intend to deliver a QoS (Quality of Service) with 99,9999% uptime guarantee.
By using wireless technology there is no need to dig for cables alongside the rail tracks. This will speed up the implementation of ERTMS by 10-20 years, will save hundreds of million euro’s and will save the train passengers lots of delays while train lines need to be shut down while digging for cables.
