The objective of the Digirail goal development and monitoring group, established a year ago, is to further strengthen the interaction and cooperation between the various organisations in the railway sector to achieve the greatest possible benefit from the Digirail project. The group has been looking at the main development objectives of railway sector organisations regarding rail transport and, as a result, a new sub-group has been set up to focus on automatic train operation (ATO) as a whole. Its purpose is to ensure that the benefits of ATO are realised.
In its work, Digirail’s goal development and monitoring group has identified the main development objectives of railway sector organisations in rail transport.
Based on the studies carried out, the reliability of rail transport is one of the most critical factors that Digirail can influence. Reliability is one of the most important factors affecting the attractiveness of rail travel for both passengers and freight. With Digirail, the removal and extensive renewal of thousands of trackside equipment will reduce disruption and improve reliability. Better quality and more accessible data will enable new services to support mobility needs and facilitate the anticipation of disruptions.
In addition to reliability, the stakeholders interviewed expect Digirail to bring benefits in terms of return on investment through increased capacity, railway safety, cost-effectiveness and energy efficiency through the automation of train operation and traffic control.
“Digirail’s goal development and monitoring group has identified the points where cooperation between railway sector operators needs to be further developed to achieve Digirail’s benefits, and this is the focus of the group’s objectives. As a result of the last meeting, we decided to set up an ATO (Automatic Train Operation) sub-group as we recognised that the ATO concept is a critical part of extracting Digirail’s benefits and it also requires work outside Digirail,” says Raine Luntta, Chief Design Officer at Fintraffic Railway.
How was the study on the main development objectives of the organisations carried out?
During Digirail’s study phase, we set out the objectives for Digirail to move forward with regard to its technology. However, a broader extraction of the objectives requires a shared will of the sector to extract benefits across the sector, as well as outside the project. The aim is that the group’s work will result in a shared vision for the material to be published.
At the end of 2024, the group examined the long-term development of rail transport using a three-horizon framework. This was used to identify objectives in the short term (1–5 years), medium term (5–15 years) and long term (15+ years), and to assess Digirail’s role in enabling or achieving these objectives.
The group identified eight key target areas that bring together the views of the different organisations: a common knowledge base, automation, capacity, cost-efficiency, continuity, safety, energy efficiency and smoothness of operation. During the latter part of 2024, the group interviewed participants in even more detail about their organisation’s development goals in rail transport.
The Digirail goal development and monitoring group is facilitated by Fintraffic and the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency. The group has representatives from VR, HSL, Fenniarail, Pääkaupunkiseudun Junakalusto Oy, North Rail and Traficom.