Page 122 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 5

González, Ricardo.

Figure 2: ETCS Level 2
3. High-Speed Railway needs

In the future High-Speed Railway will probably have the following needs:
Better Availability: Even if current High-Speed Railway shows high availability figures, once
the infrastructure is used at its limit (i.e. more passenger and freight traffic), availability
will become even more important. Use of redundant and distributed systems is the basis for
ensuring and increasing availability. The use of cloud computing and virtualization allows having
redundant systems and immediate fault recovery in case of disasters.

Reduced Maintenance: Maintenance costs are an important factor in Life Cycle Costs. The
use of Smart Data based systems, which can provide predictive maintenance, will reduce
maintenance costs and also increase availability. Reducing the amount of equipment also leads
to a better maintainability: less probability of faulty elements and less requirements for spares
and maintenance personnel.

Increased Efficiency: The usage of Automatic Train Operation and/or Driving Advisory Systems
for optimal driving profiles helps to reduce the carbon footprint. The use of cloud computing
maximizes the efficiency of investment.
New technology: Digitalization is becoming a must in many businesses. And this also applies to
High-Speed Railway. Use of wireless technology, improved Security, Smart Data strategies and
implementation of new signalling systems such as ETCS level 3 for High-Speed Railway, will
open the door to a digital future.

4. The Future of High-Speed Railway

4.1 Retrospective

Spain has had the High-Speed Railway since 1992. If we look at the progress of technology over
the last 25 years, we can provide examples of technology that did not exist at that time, but
are essential today:

• Internet (in 1992 it was very primitive)
• MP3 players such as IPod
• GSM (in 1992 it was just started)

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