Thirty years have now passed since the first specifications were drawn up for the European Rail Traffic Management System, Ertms, but the picture across Europe’s railway network remains bleak. The new standard was intended above all to ensure interoperability, effectively removing borders and replacing the various national systems, which are entirely incompatible with one another. Yet implementation across the European railway network remains very limited and, even where Ertms has become the only standard, it is as though everyone were speaking a different dialect rather than a common language.
The most striking example comes at the border between Luxembourg and Belgium, where freight operator Cfl Cargo has revealed that, in order to cross the frontier, the driver has to stop for almost an hour to reconfigure the onboard system, even though both networks are equipped with European signalling. This is due to an apparently minor detail: for freight trains, the speed limit in Belgium is 100 km/h, while in Luxembourg it is 90 km/h because the block sections are shorter and therefore incompatible with the Belgian ones. The Etcs system does not “read” this difference and does not adapt to it.
It may seem paradoxical, and something of a play on words, but the common standard lacks standardisation. It has fragmented national implementation plans, is hampered by the high cost of lineside upgrades (Sst), and involves a slow and complex approval process, as well as soaring costs for trainborne upgrades (Ssb). Equipping a locomotive with onboard Etcs is estimated to cost up to €900,000, while software updates can reach €400,000 per vehicle. In some cases, upgrading an existing locomotive is even prohibitive because of one-off costs of up to €3.5 million. There is more: different versions exist, the so-called “baselines”, with various sub-specifications that are constantly evolving, giving operators no reasonable time to amortise their investments. And while updating a smartphone app costs nothing, even minor changes to Etcs onboard systems are extremely expensive.
The rollout of the standard across the European network is also behind schedule. The Office of the European Coordinator for the Ertms programme says that only 20 of more than 200 cross-border rail links in Europe are equipped with the unified signalling system. According to data from the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport, DG Move, only 10% of the Ten-T network meets the new requirements, equal to 12,400 kilometres, while just 19% of Europe’s rolling stock fleet, fewer than 9,000 vehicles, has onboard equipment. It is therefore unsurprising that the target set by Brussels to install the European standard by 2030 on the 50,000 kilometres of the EU’s core railway network appears highly unlikely to be met.
Despite these delays, some positive signs have recently emerged. France has realised that the most important high-speed passenger line in its network, Paris-Lyon, had become completely obsolete under the national Tvm system, with no further scope to expand capacity. This led to the decision to switch to the European standard. Germany has also set up an Ertms coordination office within the Federal Ministry of Transport, while network manager Db InfraGo has awarded a €6.3 billion contract to four consortia for the supply of digital technologies that also include Etcs.
At continental level, the aim is also to use a larger market to reduce the cost of individual equipment. However, it is above all the authorisation procedures that need to be simplified and standardised in order to cut costs as much as possible, as happens in many other sectors of the economy. Europe, through DG Move, has also committed to setting precise timetables for the adoption of harmonised technical rules so as not to penalise companies. This includes the new communication standard that will replace Gsm-R, through to future Automatic Train Operation specifications with the most advanced levels of automation.
Piermario Curti Sacchi
