Here are the hi-tech railways of the future: The Italian Railway Network (RFI) will bring the Diamond 2.0 high-speed diagnostic train in a virtual 3D version to the Dubai Expo today, announcing the arrival of four more trains of the same type by 2026, and will present Ertms Urban, the electronic train control system and its future evolutions, which, by allowing the minimum distance between one train to be shortened from 1,200 to 300 meters, will guarantee, in addition to higher safety levels, greater punctuality and a flow of traffic in large urban nodes. The managing director, Vera Fiorani, leads the RFI delegation.
The first installations
In short, more trains will be able to travel simultaneously in large urban nodes. First installations, by 2026, in Rome, Milan and Florence. Those who remember the season of the great delays in high-speed 2018 will also remember that one of the main reasons given by the FS was the bottling that was created in the urban nodes, especially Rome and Milan, capable of absorbing less traffic than the high-speed lines. precisely because of the different train control system. Ertms, born with the Italian high speed in 2006 and then becoming a reference model for all of Europe, now arrives in the cities. Ertms Urban will be able to manage more traffic, as well as guaranteeing more safety, even if the problem remains of the head stations, such as Termini and Centrale, which limit the frequency of convoys. The other problem that emerged in the season of delays was the Direttissima Rome-Florence on which the Ertms equipment will also be completed this year.
Onboard integrity checks
«The central function that we will experience in Ertms Urban – says Paola Firmi, head of the RFI Technical Department – making the whole system take a leap forward, is the control of the integrity of the train on board the train. If a convoy loses a piece or breaks, today the ground systems, the traffic lights that everyone can see at the side of the tracks, tell us about it. Bringing on board the train the check that the train is intact will simplify and greatly reduce the ground systems. We will have fewer ground systems but the system will be more reliable and safe. This, together with the geolocation through the satellite, will be the greatest technological leap compared to current systems ».
A European bet
Ertms is also a European bet because it allows interoperability and communication between the various national railway systems. Not surprisingly, the PNRR points us to 2.7 billion, already put up for tender, which are added to the 500 million already awarded to a consortium led by Hitachi Rail and principals Alstom Ferroviaria and Ceit in Ati. The plan will allow – compared to the current 780 kilometers of high-speed network equipped with Ertms – to build another 1,270 kilometers by 2023 and 3,400 by 2026. In this case, the PNRR acts as an accelerator on the main network with respect to an overall program that will allow in 2036 to install Ertms on the entire 16,800 km network.
Technological prodigy
The Diamond 2.0 train is a technological prodigy, an Etr 500 that at 300 kilometers per hour (speed test passed on 10 March) monitors the health of the infrastructure, working with 98 cameras and over 200 sensors installed on board that allow keep under control 500 parameters. «To the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance – says Giulio Del Vasto, head of the infrastructures operational management of RFI – we associate the predictive diagnostic activity that allows us to intervene before the failure occurs. The diagnostic trains – explains Del Vasto – today guarantee a Safety Integrity Level (Sil) 2, that is, they produce a certificate that favors the orientation on the maintenance solutions to be adopted, but leaves the final decision on these solutions to man. With subsequent evolutions we will develop a Sil 4, as the Ansfisa Safety Authority asks us: in that context, the algorithms certify the data and directly operate the choice of maintenance to be done “.