Rail Transportation in Spain

Timely Arrival

Passengers in the Spanish train system are guaranteed that they will arrive on time or their fare is refunded. That doesn’t happen often; RENFE prides itself on a 98.5 percent punctuality rate. This performance owes much to advances in information systems and signaling.

At the AVE control center in Zaragoza, Indra—one of the top European information systems companies—uses a complicated network of track sensors, signaling technology, radio transmitters, and computer systems to control Spain’s high-speed network. The DaVinci system, which was developed for ADIF and began operations in 2003, integrates information about the trains and the rail system and updates all that information in real time or within a few seconds.

High-speed rail demands precise information gathering and transmission. Not only does the control center collect data on exactly where each train is at any given moment, but it gathers other types of crucial information as well. For example, data from detectors that test the temperature of the brake boxes helps the system avoid overheating and the resulting brake failure. The system also collects information on electricity demand in every part of the line. Fiber-optic sensors detect even small fallen objects along rail paths and then sound an alarm.

Jose Miguel Rubio, DaVinci’s rail information system manager, says new research focuses on automating even more features of the control system, sidestepping human decisions. “So if you have a conflict in real time, where two trains want to go onto the same track,” says Rubio, “the automatic routing system starts to scan the track for the best route to solve the conflict.” The company is also involved in building a super control center in Madrid, which will oversee all tracks in Spain, not just the high-speed ones.

Newer, more accurate signaling systems will allow trains to run even faster. Says Javier Rivilla, project manager at Indra, “As we begin to increase rail speed, I believe we will keep on innovating and advancing within this system, making everything even easier to coördinate and even more automatic.” These developments will increase the productivity of the entire rail system, but they will also demand increasingly precise data and data transmission.

Signaling presents one of the greatest challenges both in making trains faster and in achieving interoperability across Europe. Trains traveling at high speeds need at least 8 kilometers to brake, and 12 kilometers to brake smoothly–something impossible with road signals such as traffic lights.

“These signaling installations have to be designed in such a way that if you have a problem in one site, the system has to know at each moment where the rest of the trains are and get the information to all the trains, allowing them time to slow down and prevent a collision,” says David Sanz, account manager for sales and marketing at Dimetronic, a Spanish signaling company that has been involved in a variety of Spain’s highspeed projects.