Whereas innovation in railways was once about the search for higher speeds or energy efficiency, Prof Peter Veit believes that the primary focus is now shifting to a whole‑system understanding. It will also be necessary to optimise infrastructure maintenance methods to accommodate rising demand, he explains to Reinhard Christeller.
Is today’s railway capable of finding answers to future challenges, or do we need to move towards alternatives such as magnetic levitation, monorails or Hyperloop, or even something else?
As a system, conventional wheel-rail technology is essentially unbeatable. It is ideally designed, and its strength — which it will retain in the future — lies above all in the fact that it can easily form a branched network offering high capacity. This is mainly thanks to its space-saving turnouts, which are quick to change. Innovative alternatives can provide efficient point-to-point connections, but from a network perspective they offer hardly any significant improvements in terms of speed, transport performance or environmental friendliness.
Magnetic levitation was invented in 1922, and research has been going on in Japan and Germany for decades, but so far the technology has really only been implemented on a short stand-alone route in Shanghai, plus a few lines in the metro sector. The Swissmetro concept was invented in 1974 but discarded as unfeasible before being reborn as Hyperloop in 2013. In half a century, nothing has come of it.
So let’s stick with the conventional railway. In the Green Deal, the EU has set itself the goal of doubling the market share of rail freight and high speed passenger transport by 2050. Will the expansion of lines and vehicle fleets be enough to achieve this? Or will further innovation be needed in which areas, and how will this be initiated and financed? Is there enough time to implement new concepts?
It will not be possible to accommodate the desired massive increase in traffic through adding new infrastructure, neither for high speed passenger or freight transport. In the densely populated parts of Europe, given the lengthy authorisation procedures and construction times, routes that are not already under construction or in planning will not be available by 2050.
The situation is similar when it comes to the deployment of ETCS Level 2, where there are still major gaps on key networks. ETCS Level 3 with moving block has been under discussion for three decades, but there is still no timetable for its implementation. The maximum capacity for both passenger and freight trains is also largely exhausted in the most heavily utilised networks. So I fear that that the target set by the EU cannot be achieved. Nevertheless, we can still hope to accommodate an increase in capacity in the low double-digit percentage range across Europe.
One way of accommodating more traffic would be to reduce the overnight breaks in service to provide more capacity for freight and overnight passenger trains. But herein lies a dilemma. More traffic means more wear and tear on both infrastructure and rolling stock, which requires more maintenance. And that actually suggests that we need longer service breaks, as shortening them might mean neglecting the maintenance of both superstructure and substructure.
So this is an important area for innovation. There has been continuous development in track maintenance methods and machines over the last few decades, and further innovation will increase their production output. This has already been recognised, as can be seen by the high number of patent applications in the field of infrastructure maintenance.
However, it is not enough just to improve repair techniques. Infrastructure is valuable, and above all, preventive action must be taken to protect it. The task of universities and industrial research will be to find and develop better methods and technologies across all areas of the railway system, and especially at the interfaces.
This applies first and foremost to operations. We need control systems that continuously optimise the railway as a whole, on the basis of the current network status, route characteristics, the properties of the trains and the desired capacities and timetables for each route. Such a system would draw up instructions for all trains operating on the network, in order to minimise wear and tear on the track and vehicles as well as reducing energy consumption. But at the same time, it must provide attractive timetables and good connections for passengers and ensure a high capacity for freight transport to meet the overall requirements.
Research must also focus on durable and maintenance-friendly methods of infrastructure construction, from the substructure to the track and its components, as well as its interaction with the rolling stock. I am convinced that there is still a great deal of potential for innovation in the future. The 40% reduction in the cost of infrastructure maintenance and 25% improvement in average service life achieved over the last 15 years will not be the end of the story.
Future track maintenance strategies must also address the age-old challenge of determining when to intervene in a service life-optimised manner. Instead of constant condition limit values that remain the same over the entire life of the infrastructure, research should enable us to introduce dynamic limit values for track condition, as has already become the case for the maintenance of wheelsets.
Do you anticipate that further innovation in the fields of IT and artificial intelligence will help to make the railway system as a whole more attractive?
I see IT and AI as necessary tools for the future. But they remain tools. The more complex our systems become, the more we need comprehensively trained people who understand the whole railway system to have an overview. Otherwise we will have to believe everything the computers tell us. What is needed here is innovation in the supporting systems to help increase network performance, improve reliability and provide real-time optimisation of timetables in the event of irregularities.
Above all, making the whole railway system more attractive means thinking about the customers and informing them in line with their needs. We must continue to innovate here, so that travellers, freight shippers, forwarders and consignees always have the clear information that they want and need, above all, to know whether everything is running as planned or whether there is any disruption.
Despite repeated political commitments and targets, rail freight’s market share has been declining for years, as traditional bulk commodities disappear. What innovations would be needed to deliver the longed-for modal shift in freight transport? Do we need to focus on the ‘right’ kind of goods that are best suited to be moved by rail?
In order to increase the overall capacity of the conventional rail network, freight trains must be able travel at a speed of at least 120 km/h, or ideally 160 km/h, so that they can fit into the sequence of passenger trains. This would allow them to reach their destination more quickly without having to wait in sidings and loops.
Faster freight trains are needed to make rail competitive in modern logistics and distribution networks. And eliminating time spent in loops would have the added advantage of reducing the wear to the superstructure that is caused by heavy trains accelerating back to line speed with high tractive forces. The best way to facilitate faster freight trains would be a widespread roll-out of electro-pneumatic braking, along with further innovations that are currently under development, such as automatic brake testing and digital automatic couplers.
The railway as a transport system relies primarily on physical elements such as infrastructure and vehicles, as well as maintenance concepts. Is it realistic to expect anything more than marginal innovations?
We need physical systems to transport both people and freight. The components of the rail system and their maintenance methods have been constantly optimised throughout the history of railways. Innovative approaches are still required, reducing the number of components on the one hand and at the same time further improving the quality of those components in order to reduce the need for maintenance. The target for the future must be to improve the availability of the lines, by reducing the amount of maintenance required while maintaining the same (or better) quality.
The current separation between infrastructure management and train operations poses a great danger that optimisation carried out in one part of the system will incur costs elsewhere, by neglecting the system inter-relationships. Even if the railway is organised as largely autonomous subsystems, the movement of people and goods should be agnostic about organisational models. Or to put it another way, the organisational structures must map the system inter-relationships in order to be able to control them in a system-compliant manner.
The more interfaces there are, the more complex it all becomes. This applies not only to physical interfaces, but above all to the very complex interfaces between areas of responsibility. To my mind, the very existence of such interfaces shows a lack of understanding of the railway as a complex ‘system of systems’, and damages the overall efficiency.
The essential innovation for the coming years is to strengthen our understanding of the overall system once again, including the future development of vehicles that protect the infrastructure as much as possible. Significant improvements could be achieved through a combination of innovations with proven technologies that have been abandoned due to a lack of incentives — for example as a result of insufficiently differentiated track access charges.
A good example is provided by Switzerland and the United Kingdom, where track access charges are determined in part on the track damage caused by traction units and freight wagons in particular. A resolute implementation of this principle throughout Europe would undoubtedly trigger a huge surge in innovation, aimed at optimising the track friendliness of the overall fleet.
What skills do you think will be needed in these different areas of the railway over the coming years, to manage the day-to-day business, to develop the system and to undertake research and development?
We will increasingly need people who are able to take a system perspective in all areas. In day-to-day business the (partially) automated supporting solutions must be based on system approaches and the employees must be able to understand the results. That requires an understanding of the system, which will be required even more so in system development and research. I don’t want to separate system development and basic research — fundamental research must also be based on an extensive understanding of the system in order to recognise the potential and thus turn the right screws.
Is there enough new blood coming into the rail sector to undertake these future tasks? And presumably we will still have to maintain existing systems that will last for decades? Are today’s job profiles in the railway sector attractive enough?
There are not enough young people, even though the job profiles are attractive and innovative. Young people rightly want to work in innovative areas, so the innovative power of the rail system needs to be publicised more.
Railway technology has developed considerably, to the point that today a section of track can be relaid in a highly automated process using an assembly line approach, and the substructure can be renovated at the same time if necessary. Track can be installed to an evenness, expressed in an average vertical height variation of just 0·3 mm (standard deviation). To my mind that shows how state-of-the-art technology and digitalisation have been implemented.
Today’s railway is both high-tech and innovative. When people think of e-mobility or autonomous vehicles, they think of roads, but the railways have been doing both for a long time. Electrification started in the 19th century and has been widespread since the 1920s, while today many metros around the world use Automatic Train Operation.
Are the university education and vocational training systems in Europe appropriate to meet the evolving job profiles for the rail sector?
University education is very diverse across the various countries in Europe and beyond. There are countries in which railway subjects are hardly taught at universities or not at all, and others where railway disciplines have a long tradition at university level and are being further developed. Fortunately, this includes both Austria and Germany.
Transport infrastructure construction has been a core subject at Graz University of Technology since its foundation, and the Railway Institute was separated out as its own organisational unit in the 1960s. Since then, there has been a railway institute in the Faculty of Civil Engineering, which is now branded as the Institute of Railway Engineering & Transport Economy. We have been offering an inter-disciplinary Master’s course in Infrastructure for the past decade.
At the beginning of the 2020s, the Institute of Structural Durability & Railway Vehicles was founded within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, while the Institute of Railway Design was founded as an additional body in the Faculty of Civil Engineering. The three institutes now work closely together in teaching and research, partly through the Research Cluster Railway Systems in which major railway operators and suppliers from superstructure to signalling technology are also represented. The RCRS is primarily involved in cross-thematic, cross-system projects.
How is this research and innovation taken forward to industrialisation? Does the university provide any support for graduates looking to launch start-up companies in the field of railway systems?
Graz University of Technology is a partner of Science Park Graz, which has now been running since 2002; this provides funding for start-up projects. Other shareholders are the University of Graz and Med Uni Graz. Science Park Graz fosters creative business-minded thinking and entrepreneurial action in all branches of knowledge, among them railways. It aims to be attractive for investors in growth-oriented companies offering innovative products and services.
Since its establishment, more than 125 founding projects have been incorporated in the coaching program of Science Park Graz. Some examples of successful railway-related companies are Innofreight Solutions, developing modular freight wagons aimed at meeting specific customer demands, and PJM in the field of measurements of rolling stock and infrastructure.
* Professor Peter Veit is Head of the Institute of Railway Engineering & Transport Economy at Graz University of Technology, a post he has held since 2010. He has also served as a specialist adviser on infrastructure to ÖBB and SBB Infrastruktur. He is due to be succeeded as head of the institute by his current deputy Associate Professor Stefan Marschnig with effect from October 1.
