Interoperability: in progress, still much to do

In the year 2007 KEMA Rail Transport Certification participated in two studies, one contracted by the European Union (EU), another contracted by the European Railway Agency (ERA).

For the EU the progress of interoperability on the railways is evaluated, as part of the transposition within the Member States of Directives 2004/49/EC, 2004/50/EC, and the progress on the implementation of Directive 96/48/EC (on the interoperability of the trans-European high speed rail system) and Directive 2001/16/EC (on the interoperability of the conventional rail system). For ERA KEMA Rail Transport Certification did the project management of the study Survey of Safety Approvals for the first ERTMS implementations. In this study KEMA Rail Transport Certification co-operated with RINA, Cetren, Attica Advies, EBC and Arsenal Research. From both studies it became clear that interoperability and the implementation of ERTMS are progressing, but that a lot of work towards further harmonisation and implementation has to be done.

European directives
The EU is actively creating the conditions for railway interoperability, in the area of the high speed rail system via the Directive 96/48/EC and for the conventional rail system via the Directive 2001/16/EC. In April 2004 both directives have been updated according to 2004/50/EC. At the very same moment, the EU published the Directive on Railway Safety, Directive 2004/49/EC.

The goals of European policy can be visualised as a chain, as shown in Figure 1. Starting from the top, the EU has two goals: keep Europe on the move, without the environmental impacts, like pollution. As a consequence, the market share in transport of railways should be enlarged. This can only be reached, by making the railways more competitive both in the area of freight transport as well as for passenger transport. Two open markets are needed: one on the side of the transport services, the other on the side of the products, which are needed in the railway system. For the latter specifically, the need of standardisation is dominant in order to reach compatibility of the components and subsystems. To facilitate this, harmonisation of technical specifications is a prerequisite and – in parallel – the standards with respect to safety are to be harmonised.

Study on Rail interoperability and Safety
Following the publication of the above mentioned directives, the European Commission has to keep track on the progress of implementation. Therefore the EU launched in 2006 the study on Rail interoperability and Safety, which was contracted to DHV and KEMA Rail Transport Certification.

Figure 1: Chain of European goals

State of implementation
In order to analyse the progress on interoperability, two chains can be distinguished, as depicted in Figure 2

 
Figure 2: Two chains for the analysis

In the upper line of Figure 2 the legal line from Directives, via Commission Decisions, towards organisational measures, the actual transposition and implementation in legal structures is shown. The lower line shows the chain from basic (interoperability) constituents (the components, or the building stones), via the subsystems, like ERTMS, towards to the integrated railway system via the actual application to railway lines, on which the rolling stock (trains) are being put into operation. This railway operation has to take place in the legal context, as defined via the upper line.

These two lines are used in the study in order to get a clear picture on the status of the actual implementation in – on the one hand – the legislation in the Member States and – on the other hand – the technical realisation via actual infrastructure projects.

Subsystems
The upper level European directives divide the railway system (both high speed and conventional) into subsystems, like:

• infrastructure;
• energy
• control and command and signalling
• traffic operation and management
• rolling stock

Each subsystem is then defined via a so-called TSI (Technical Specification for Interoperability). The case of the TSI for Control, Command and Signalling (CCS) creates a further division between two so-called assemblies: the on-board assembly and the track side assembly. This is depicted in the upper half of Figure 3.

Figure 3: Subsystem integration towards one railway system

System integration
Before a railway line can be put into service, all subsystems have to be integrated. This is the subject of the lower half of Figure 3. A complicated example is the CCS subsystem, where on the one hand integration of the track side assembly with the on board assembly has to take place. While on the other hand, both assemblies have to be integrated into their respective environments:

• The track side assembly in the signalling infrastructure and into the civil and energy infrastructure.
• The on board assembly in the vehicle, where its main interfaces are with the traction system, the braking system and the driver.

Furthermore all other subsystems (each of which is defined in a TSI) have to be integrated.

It is to be noted, that there are also parts within the railway system that are not covered by any TSI (the colon at the right of Figure 3). Examples are: the interlocking system (not included in the TSI CCS) and Traffic Management Systems. Also these systems are to be integrated into the whole railway system.

As a consequence, the checks that have to take place in order to decide on the putting into service of a new or refurbished railway line or rolling stock are still strongly dominated by national regulations and habits. This is according to the European Directives defined as a responsibility of each Member State (e.g. in Directive 2001/16, Article 14).

One very important issue concerns the operational rules which apply to the operation of the railway line or the piece of rolling stock. Actually, these operational rules and conditions are – due to the nature of the surrounding national systems – still nationally oriented and dominated.

Status of implementation
One parameter which can be used to show the status of implementation of interoperability is to count the length of the network, which complies with the EU-legislation. In Figure 4 this parameter is shown with respect to the implementation of ERTMS/ETCS.

Figure 4: Progress of interoperability in terms of line length with ERTMS/ETCS implemented

Figure 5: Requests and certificates for Subsystems

Another metric consists of the count of certificates, which are issued by Notified Bodies. On August 27 2007 on the NB RAIL website a total of 97 issued certificates for subsystems and 149 requests for certification were registered, as shown in Figure 5.

It is interesting to remark that looking at the total volume – the sum of subsystem certificates issued and requested and IC certificates issued and requested – CCS comprises much more certificates then the other subsystems: see Figure 6

Figure 6: relative distribution of certificates

Another approach is to show the distribution of the number of certificates per European country: see Figure 7.

Germany (“DE”) and the UK are the countries where the highest number of certificates have been issued.

Conclusions from EU-study
From this study, the main conclusions are the following:

• The legal system is in place;
• Implementations in the Member States are nearly completed;
• The institutions in the Member States and on European level have largely been established;
• A large part of the TSI’s is available;
• The first interoperable parts of the network have been put in operation;
• Interoperable traffic on these lines is getting to start.

Furthermore, the study drew some secondary conclusions, i.e.:

• ERTMS is the most important driver of interoperability;
• There exists confusion about the definition of interoperability: is only the train-track interface concerned or only ERTMS or does interoperability aim at a competitive market?
• The separation of responsibilities for infrastructure management and operations is a corner stone in railway policy;
• Demonstration of interoperability is to be done through certification by Notified Bodies;
• Harmonization of the whole European network can only be reached in the (very) long term.
• Future success depends on the use of feedback of experiences: exchange of information and co-operation on key issues.

Study on first ERTMS implementations
In 2007 KEMA Rail Transport Certification also conducted the study Survey of Safety Approvals for the first ERTMS implementations, which was contracted by the European Railway Agency (ERA). In this study KEMA Rail Transport Certification co-operated with RINA, Cetren, Attica Advies, EBC and Arsenal Research. KEMA Rail Transport Certification was responsible for the project management of the study.

Member states’ responsibilities
The interoperability directives define the responsibility of Member States for bringing in service the subsystems; the Safety Directive (art.16) specifies that this responsibility is allocated to the National Safety Authorities.

Furthermore, in order to implement ERTMS in a context with existing infrastructure, specific national solutions can be employed for those parts of the subsystem where there are open points (provided that notification of the applicable national technical rules has been submitted). From this perspective it might be the case that national solutions chosen might lead to non-interoperability.

In order to survey whether this problem is a real problem and to assess the severity of this problem, ERA requested for the study: Survey of safety approvals for the first ERTMS implementations.

Figure 8: Some of the projects investigated

The following projects, which are in an advanced status of implementation or which are already in commercial operation, have been analysed:

• Austria & Italy: Basis Brenner Tunnel project (BBT)
• Austria & Hungary: Vienna – Nickelsdorf
• Belgium: Liege – German/Belgian border (Line 3), Antwerp – Dutch/Belgian border (Line 4) and Belgian conventional network
• France: LGV-Est
• Germany: Berlin-Halle-Leipzig (BHL)
• Italy: Rome – Naples and Torino – Novara
• The Netherlands: Amsterdam – Utrecht, Betuweroute and HSL-Zuid
• Spain: Madrid – Zaragoza – Lleida and La Sagra – Toledo
• Spain & France: Perpignan – Figueras

Conclusions from ERA-study
The main conclusion of the study is that there is no harmonised approach for many important subjects around the acceptance of ERTMS. These subjects concern: the safety approval as such: each state, each NSA and / or Infrastructure Manager chooses its own approach. Further: the safety qualification tests, the integration of on-board assembly with track-side assembly; the current concept of the TSI is insufficiently explicit in this respect. Also the operational aspects are not harmonised: bilateral solutions are negotiated between Infrastructure Managers and Railway Undertakings, but also between Infrastructure Managers. The integration of the ERTMS into the overall railway system is not harmonised; it is to be noted that this subject is explicitly addressed to the Member States, according to the Directives.

There are not yet international ERTMS trains in operation at this moment. From the examined projects, there is no evidence of onboard equipment having received full EC certification. EC certification is seen by parties involved as a complex and expensive procedure (all test scenarios…), which is not needed at this moment, as there is no international traffic. The only exceptions are the Betuweroute and the HSL-Zuid+L4 which are in the process of subsystem (track+train) tests.

ISA (Independent Safety Assessors, according to the CENELEC standards) are regulated in a very different way in different countries, from no regulation to general accreditation up to precise accreditation by NSA. Also the level of responsibility is defined in different ways. There is quite a big diversity in handling Safety Approval versus interoperability certification. In some cases ISA is normally seen as part of EC certification, while in other cases the ISA is seen as the highest priority issue for allowing the revenue service, with interoperability sometimes left to a later stage. In any case there is little experience in ISA’s aimed at international cross-acceptance.

The consortium defined some proposals that can contribute in mitigating these problems:

• Tests should be explicitly categorised according to the following scheme:
  • Integration of the assembly (either track-side or on-board);
  • Integration of the CCS subsystem (track-side + on-board);
  • Integration of the CCS subsystem into the overall railway system (either conventional or high speed).
• Adequate Test Reporting should allow for re-use of test results.
• There is a need to harmonise the terminology of the TSI’s (Interoperability Constituents, assemblies, subsystems) with that of EN 50.126 and 50.129 (product, generic application, specific application, railway authority).
• The ERTMS operational rules have been described in the TSI OPE. This TSI should be used by all Administrations for international traffic. Until now the importance of the use and the verification of the OPE TSI as a part of implementing ERTMS are not recognised.

Concluding
Interoperability and ERTMS are becoming reality. Both terms were a decade ago only written on paper. Now they are becoming practised, realised and implemented. The road towards a complete interoperable European railway network is being paved. The next steps are taken via the freight Corridors and the further expansion of the high speed rail network.

KEMA Rail Transport Certification is on the edge of these processes by certifying ERTMS equipment, Interoperability Constituents, on-board assembly as well as track-side assembly. Also participating in the European studies, described in this paper.

KEMA Rail Transport Certification, your partner for interoperable European railway systems.

Author:
Ir. F.T.M. Walenberg, Director at KEMA Rail
E: Frank.Walenberg@Kema-rail.nl
T: +31 26 356 3248