Conference article

Infrastructure managers around Europe are facing two major topics within the next years: The large-scale renewal of command and control systems and the need to increase capacity. Both topics can be addressed with the further development of ETCS Level 3 and ATO in combination with the introduction of new types of interlockings. Accompanying the further development of command and control systems there is a need to enhance the blocking-time theory by defining new time components. With this development, effects on capacity can be identified and feasible capacity gains can be evaluated. The enhanced blocking-time theory needs to be implemented into standard railway software tools, which can be quite challenging, due to a shift in paradigms compared to all current command and control systems. Within this paper, experiences gained in previous studies regarding the necessary blocking-time theory enhancements, the implementation challenges and exemplary capacity gains are outlined. Based on this topics for further research and standardization are defined.

Blocking-time theory, ETCS Level 3, ATO, Capacity assessment