Development of automation levels in railway transport systems: a state of the art and migration strategy analysis from the European Train Management Systems (ERTMS) towards the integration of Automatic Train Operations (ATO)

The use of high speed trains worldwide is becoming increasingly important. High speed freight trains and passenger trains are frequently preferred since they respect the evnvironment and the use of green renewable energies which are the key to an ecosustainable world. In Europe, typically these trains begin their journeys in one country, pass through other countries and terminate in yet another country. Consequently the concept of interoperability is a fundamental goal to reach and requires specific standards between countries to support safety and respect levels of energy consumption. The system which supports this requirement from the ERA (European Railways Agency) is the ERTMS (European Railway Traffic Management Systems) that was introduced in Italy in 2005. Currently Europe is considering this system to support traffic management and safety for each train, mainly due to the use of some specific braking curve models but the system may also require other updates. For example, the use of an automated system to improve the standard and the quality of the service is another key element to railways worldwide. This article focuses on the use of an autonomous system in railways management called ATO (Automatic Train Operations). The system is subdivided into four separate macro areas which were designed to obtain different goals or GoA (Grade of Automation). Italy has some specific piece of the standard to understand better how to implement in On Board trains and on trackside, mainly analyze the access radio part problems to support the protocol using the new communication radio system called FRMCS (Future Railway Mobile Communication System). The use of some experiment is required to obtain all of this. Finally Italy also collects all the experiments in order to be sure to update the standard in the fleet even for the future trends for the protocol.