The influence of railway signalling characteristics on resilience

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Abstract

Seven disrupted scenarios have been simulated on the railway corridor Utrecht-Den Bosch, each over three signalling configurations to find the effect of in-cab signalling and reduced block section lengths on resilience. Furthermore, the place of resilience in decision making and design of railway signalling has been investigated. Although resilience is only one of the factors in the decision making and design of ETCS-projects, besides factors such as capacity, safety and interoperability, a quantification of resilience can help to either compare alternatives on all factors including resilience, to compare alternatives on resilience only, or to find the relation between design choices and resilience. Simulation of seven disrupted traffic scenarios has shown that using in-cab signalling with ETCS L2 compared to line-side signalling with NS'54/ATB has saved 10% of the delay in the scenarios on average. By using reduced block sections lengths in combination with in-cab signalling, 20% of the delay has been saved on average. For absolute resilience, short block sections should be placed along the whole track. As this is not realistic from cost perspective, decreased block sections are in each case advised nearby yards and switches.