International Railway Journal - July 2008 - (Page 20)

Conference report Technology is vital to rail’s future Railways need to harness modern technology as quickly as possible if they are to remain at the forefront of the battle to reduce carbon emissions and increase capacity, reports David Briginshaw from the World Conference on Railway Research (WCRR) in Seoul, Korea. way to reduce CO2 emissions because it is able to get people to switch from road and air to rail because the service is faster, more reliable, and more comfortable. People don’t choose which mode to take because of environmental reasons, at least not yet.” Aliadiére ended with a rallying call: “In the past, we waited for the politicians before doing anything. Now we must propose solutions first and then persuade the politicians and investors to implement them.” Professor Andrew McNaughton, chief engineer with Network Rail (NR), which will lead to a much greater demand for travel, but people will not put up with inconvenience or unreliability. “People must be able to travel ticketlessly for the whole journey,” McNaughton continued. “Technology allows us to track people through their mobile phones or credit cards, and then charge them after their journey. RFID is already used to track freight, and could be used to track people.” McNaughton said we face a huge challenge to transform our stations to make them friendly, easy-to-use, and secure, but we can’t afford the time to do it one by one. NR has developed a pre-fabricated station that uses standard components, which McNaughton says can reduce the time to install a new station “from a year to a week.” The same principles of using modular components assembled off-site can be applied to infrastructure such as switches, as has been done in Switzerland, or even bridges. “Build a switch in a factory, to factory quality, with lower costs, and install it quickly,” says McNaughton. “We have installed the first composite factory-built bridge in minutes.” McNaughton said the rail industry can no longer afford to design the infrastructure and rolling stock separately. “We need lighter trains which use less energy, because it will be like gold dust in the future. Lighter trains mean less wear. The cost difference of not designing a train for the infrastructure it will run on is tenfold because it results in maintenance we didn’t need to do.” McNaughton said we need to be able to operate a lot more trains on the same infrastructure. “At 200km/h, we should be able to operate trains at 1 minute headways.” IRJ T HE plenary sessions of the WCRR produced some very thought provoking proposals by some of the leading people in the railway industry on how to make rail play a bigger role in the fight against global warming. Mr Luc Aliadiére, CEO of the International Union of Railways (UIC), set the scene by stressing that we face two main challenges: climate change and a shortage of resources. He noted the world population is still growing strongly from 6.45 billion in 2005 to 6.8 billion in 2010, 7.6 billion in 2020, and 8.2 billion in 2030 which means 25% more people on the planet in 22 years’ time than there are today. “Transport causes 26% of global CO2 emissions and is the sector with the highest growth in global CO2 emissions,” Aliadiére said. But within that, railfreight produces three times less CO2 emissions than road freight, and long-distance passenger trains nearly five times less than aircraft. “We must try to develop mobility and sustainability, and research and development is the key to this,” Aliadiére asserted. He said the rail industry needs to conduct research for three main reasons: to maintain its environmental advantage to combat the high and rising cost of energy and oil, and to attract investment - the success of high-speed rail and North American railfreight is linked to a huge investment. Aliadiére pointed to the danger of the railway industry becoming complacent about its environmental credentials. “Our competitors are improving,” he said. “We must not say ‘we are the best’ because we won’t be the best for eternity if we don’t try to improve.” “In the past, we waited for the politicians before doing anything. Now we must propose solutions first and then persuade the politicians and investors to implement them.” Luc Aliadiére Aliadiére urged railways to electrify more of their networks, because rail transport can use renewable sources of energy more easily than other modes, and electric trains can be powered by any type of available energy. Electric trains can regenerate energy during braking, but he said this is still not done widely enough. “Railways in Europe have agreed to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% from 1990 to 2020, and the UIC is the leading force in this,” Aliadiére told delegates. “High-speed rail is a good Britain’s track authority, set out his strategy for shifting rail transport up a gear to take advantage of new technology to both reduce costs and make rail more competitive. “There has been a huge technology jump in life in general, but for rail technical development moves very slowly,” McNaughton observed. Despite the improvements in urban and intercity rail travel, most people don’t travel by train. “We will become more prosperous, live longer, and there will be a lot more of us, 20 IRJ July 2008

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International Railway Journal - July 2008 Contents This Month News Transit News Market News/Technology News News Analysis Conference Report Korean Railways Face a Bright Future Korean Exports Surge Ahead Ready to Roll in China Velaro Shows Eastern Promise Are You Sitting Comfortably? Compin Meets New Challenges The Fabric of Society Grinding Out a Result Rendezvous Full Contact List The Last Word

International Railway Journal - July 2008

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