TWE

Project details

Duration

03.2016-04.2017

Sponsor

external page FOT Federal Office for Transport

Staff

M. Sojka and Dr. V. de Martinis

Summary

Recent perspectives in the field of autonomous cars and the increasing productivity pressure forces to speed up the innovation processes in rail systems. Most of the experts believe that autonomous driving will lead the radical change that the transport system will have in the next years. At the same time, there are huge investments in railway infrastructures, meaning that the railway system is still considered an optimal solution and it will still be part of the transport market. In railway systems, the introduction of innovations generally takes a longer time when compared with the other transport modes. Therefore, it is crucial to identify the most promising technical developments in the long-term perspective.

Main purpose of the study is to collect, cluster and evaluate all promising innovations that will effectively help railway system facing the challenges of the next decades and the competition with the other transport modes, in a “battlefield” completely redefined. To do so, a set of interviews with almost 20 experts, both from the industry and the academia, has been organized.

Results show that, within the wide set of innovations proposed, more than 50% of the choices have referred to the topics “Automation in operation” and “Advances in Maintenance”. In particular innovations like ATO systems, automatic traffic management systems, preventive maintenance management tools and sensors network on the infrastructure are the most promising innovation for the future railway system. In conclusion, a road map on the introduction of these innovations in the Swiss rail system has been formulated.