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Today, trains are equipped with up to six different navigational
systems. Each is extremely costly and takes up space on-board.
A train crossing from one European country to another must switch
the operating standards as it crosses the border. All this adds
to travel time and operational and maintenance costs.
With trends for privatisation fuelling governmental calls
for accountability, now more than ever, operators must be
competitive. Railways need to offer speed and convenience,
not only for very high speed trains, but for all mainline
trains and equally for freight operations.
Following
the decision taken by the European Transport minister in December
1989, the EC.
embarked upon a project to analyse the problems relating to
signaling and train control. At the end of 1990, ERRI
created a group of railway experts (A200) to develop the requirements
of ETCS. In June 1991, Industry ( Eurosig
) and Railways ( UIC,
ERRI
A200) agreed the principles of tight co-operation in order
to consider the requirement specifications as the base for
industrial development. The project framework included a new
on-board equipment based on open computer architecture (EUROCAB),
a new discontinuous system for data transmission, (EUROBALISE)
and a new continuous transmission system (EURORADIO). At the
end of 1993, the EU council issued an Interoperability Directive
and a decision was taken to create a structure to define the
Technical Specification for Interoperability.
At the
beginning of the 4th Framwork Programme, in 1995, the EC
defined a global strategy for the further development of ERTMS
with the aim to prepare its future implementation on the European
Rail Network. The global strategy described in the "Master
Plan of Activities" included the development and validation
phase. The objective of the validation phase was to perform
full scale tests on sites located in different countries (France,
Germany and Italy).
In the
summer of 1998, Unisig
, comprising the European Signaling companies was formed to
finalise the specifications. The Class P SRS was delivered
on 23rd April 1999. With the final signature on ERTMS specification,
Class 1, on 25th April 2000, ERTMS has finally arrived providing
substantially higher performance levels for the railways.
Great success has already been achieved to test the interoperability on EMSET and Vienna-Budapest trials. Test Track Italy has carried out trials in 2001. The revised specifications SRS 2.2.2 have been approved in February 2002 and are on the way to be introduced in the Technical Specifications for Interoperability. There are a number of commercial projects at varying stages like the West Coast Main Line, the HSL-Zuid, Rome-Naples, Switzerland, Berlin-Halle-Leipzig, Athens and Madrid - Lleida, that have been awarded and partially financed by the EC.
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