Dynamic Communications - Driving Change in Rail

Daniel Garrun: The demand for rail is growing fast, especially in countries like the US. How far do you think communications will have to go to meet this demand by 2020?

Robert M Herritty: By 2020 all extended railways will have to have advanced communications. Communications networks are crucial for signalling, but beyond signalling, networks are being built to provide broadband services to passengers, to track-side workers and for a whole host of new users with devices that weren't even imagined ten years ago.

DG: At what pace is communications technology moving and how are railways keeping up?

RH: The model is completely different to a few years ago, technology is moving at the pace at which it moves, which is extremely fast, but the railway environment has had a legacy of expecting technology to last for many years.

Communications are therefore very much driven by the consumer market which eventually rolls over into the rail market. Railways are finding that they are becoming islands, to some extent, of old technology and are suffering issues of obsolescence in equipment especially when it comes to maintaining networks.

DG: Condition based monitoring and continuous infrastructure reports could have significant maintenance advantages. Do you see this as a growing role for communication in future?

RH: Definitely, the era of intelligent infrastructure is fast approaching. Some railways such as Network Rail in the UK are embracing it and have active programs to reduce their overall costs of operations by using communications to monitor devices they never monitored in the past, to assess the condition of their assets and plan for maintenance.

Growth, however, does depend on how techno-savvy a railway is, the ability to invest and the pressure on the railway to reduce costs. I think in general in deregulated markets the pressures to reduce costs are much higher than in nationalised industries.

DG: You speak of reducing costs; there will also be a big emphasis on energy-saving, 'green' technology, which is widely expected to increase over the next few years. Can next-gen communications help companies to achieve such targets?

RH: It will in the grand sense. Targeting energy savings through the IT network itself  is not going to save a great deal of money but if you look at a railway holistically then by reducing delays or the amount of hardware usage, then this technology will be very effective for reducing overall energy consumption.

Another important aspect is that if you can drive modal shift - in other words taking people out of their cars and onto trains, by providing broadband services to attract people by allowing them to work on the train for example then you can dramatically impact the environment.

DG: Do you think there will be any significant changes in the relationship between telecoms companies and rail operators?

RH: I think it will work on two levels. In pure technology terms, where railways used to have their own communications experts in-house, technology is moving so fast that in-house personnel may not keep up. Railways may realise they need to have a more collaborative relationship with the equipment suppliers and the telecoms specialists than they've ever had before.

At another level, some railways have gone as far as to create their own railway telco's by creating a new business out of their communications assets. A good example is the Banverket, Sweden's national railway, or Germany's Deutsche Bahn, who have both created telecoms businesses. These units use a certain amount of bandwidth and availability of the network for their own railway applications and then sell the extra capacity to other users, so the telecoms asset becomes a profit centre rather than a cost centre.

DG: What one major advantage to the railway industry do you see communications technology providing by 2020?

RH: What advanced communications will bring in the general sense is lower costs as new networks are built and become reliable and maintainable. In a broader sense communications will enable new signalling technologies to operate, which will raise the capacity of the railway itself.

By re-signalling a railway you can put more passengers down the main track - which is a fundamental need of the railway operators as traffic volumes grow.

DG: In a similar vein what major obstacle can you see to the uptake of such technology?

RH: I think the answer to that involves more of the human factor; the willingness of people who by their nature are very cautious about passenger safety slowing the adoption of new technology.

The process of approval for use can be tedious and act as a deterrent to introducing new ideas.  Insisting on two or three years of testing before procurement can distort the aim of new technology. Long test cycles should be shortened -  because new technology will arise and there is a risk of re-entering the same cycle of obsolescence you always try to avoid. 

A good example of the caution we see is that many EU rail infracos have deployed GSM-r with great success – yet we still see countries wanting to run their own trials before accepting the technology in their own environment.  The result is those slow to roll out of GSM-r now likely seeing the technology displaced and superceded by LTE.

The speed of uptake in embracing new ideas and technologies fundamentally has to change to really get the benefits of technology into the rail industry.