Deployment of ETCS Positioning Balises in different Countries

The European Train Control System (ETCS) is an automatic train protection system designed to replace the many incompatible national Class B Automatic Train Protection (ATP) systems that still exist on the European railway network. The system is subject to standardization at supranational level through a set of technical and functional specifications. Nevertheless, each railway system has its own operational and technical rules. Therefore, its implementation is intentionally left open to each infrastructure manager in order to ensure its compatibility with every national network. One of the clearest examples of this is the placement of location balises in ETCS Level 2 (ETCS L2), which exhibit significant variations between countries. The objective of this study is to analyze five different ETCS scenarios across several countries, taking the German implementation as reference, and compare them against a uniform set of criteria. The aim is to identify answers that are supported by existing technical and operational rules, thereby justifying each national strategy. The evaluation ultimately yields findings about the advantages and disadvantages of each adopted solution. It is therefore possible to derive recommendations and identify areas for optimization regarding the positioning of location balises for a future further harmonized ETCS L2 implementation and also for the current German implementation.:1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation 1.2 Delimitation and framework 1.3 Methodology and structure 2 State of ETCS in Europe 2.1 Historic background 2.2 Train protection systems 2.3 Interoperability in ATP systems 2.4 ERTMS and ETCS 2.4.3 ERTMS in numbers 2.4.4 National implementations of ETCS in Europe 3 Analyzed countries 4 Odometry and location methods 4.1 Eurobalises 4.1.1 Interfaces and functioning 4.1.2 Configuration and linking 4.2 On-board odometry system 4.3 EVC odometry 4.4 Radio Block Centre 5 Track Ahead Free request 5.1 Track Ahead Free 5.2 Automatic Track Ahead Free 6 Selection of scenarios and criteria 6.1 ...