Page 12 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 5

De la Guerra, Eduardo

1. Introduction

The railway industry are looking to increase the capacity of the complete railway system,
bringing flexibility in order to align capacity and demand, to increase availability, reliability and
energy efficiency reducing life cycle costs (LCC) and an improvement of the passenger comfort
and the attractiveness of the rail transport.

Different programs inside H2020 framework are working on the development of key technologies
to remove already identified blocking points for radical innovation in the field of railway
vehicles, as part of a longer term strategy to revolutionise the rolling stock for the future.
These main aims are in line with other transportation sector, like the road transportation (e.g.
Superlight Car or ENLIGHT Project) or aerospace (e.g. SESAR, CleanSky…), inside the Roadmap
to a single European Transport Area developed by the European Commission to achieve a
sustainable transport, also called, White Paper (https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/
strategies/2011_white_paper_en).
In 2050, it is expected:

• No more conventionally-fuelled cars in cities.
• 40% use of sustainable low carbon fuels in aviation; at least 40% cut in shipping emissions.
• A 50% shift of medium distance intercity passenger and freight journeys from road to rail and
waterborne transport.
• All of which will contribute to a 60% cut in transport emissions by the middle of the century.
The third bullet point is a key point for the future of the railway sector, different innovation and
new concepts should be developed and implemented to comply with the objective of improved
capacity in railway sector of the roadmap.
The amount of passengers that can be transported by the railway system is expected to
increase dramatically so all new generation subsystems should be made smaller which will
allow a rearrangement of the architecture delivering a better use of space, lighter subsystems
(traction, vehicle structure, train control and monitoring system) which will reduce axle load
restrictions and will bring more flexibility for the future design of high-capacity and adaptability
of vehicle capacity to service conditions.
In addition, new technology development actions targeting energy efficiency and vehicle

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