Showcase ERTMS train project ‘too complex’
Financial Times: January 3 2008
By Robert Wright in London
A multi-billion euro showcase project aimed at getting Europe’s trains to run seamlessly from one country to another is unnecessarily complex and has been poorly managed, prompting a series of costly delays, according to leading figures in the sector.
The European Rail Traffic Management System has been hampered by the need to accommodate widely differing operating practices from across the Continent into a single system, according to industry figures who now question whether it was wise for Brussels to press ahead with the venture without first integrating rules.
The project is the latest in a long line of ambitious, pan-European industrial projects – including the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft, Galileo satellite and A380 super-jumbo – to have encountered problems of international co-ordination.
The European Commission first called upon the railway industry to draw up rules for ERTMS’s design in 1993. Although the first specification was published in 2000, the European Railways Agency, the arm of the Commission responsible, is still publishing new versions to iron out problems.
It is not clear what cost the many industry and government parties involved have incurred, but SNCF, the French national rail operator, estimates it would cost €2bn ($2.9bn, £1.49bn) just to fit its trains with equipment to understand ERTMS signals.
Work on the line
Jan-Willems Siebers, commercial director of NS Hi-speed, the operator of a new high-speed line in the Low Countries whose opening has been delayed by ERTMS problems, said the project had fallen victim to the difficulty of co-ordinating many organisations across Europe.
“‘System’ is always difficult and ‘European’ is always difficult because every country has its own specifics,” Mr Siebers said. “If you combine ‘Europe’ and ‘system’, you have a challenge squared.”
NS Hispeed abandoned plans for a partial, lower-speed opening of part of the Antwerp-Amsterdam HSL-Zuid in December after it failed to resolve problems with the ERTMS signalling.
Josef Doppelbauer of Canada’s Bombardier, the world’s largest rail equipment manufacturer, said the situation was deeply frustrating. To accommodate the widely differing operating rules, there had to be significant scope in the design for customisation.
However, Richard Lockett, head of strategy for the European Railways Agency, insisted it had established a firm grip in the year since it had had charge of the specification. It now knew where the ambiguities were in the specification and was working to resolve them.