Comment by dogscatstrees
15 hours ago
Is there an international consortium for best practices in high-speed train control? Surely there are countries that have good systems in place, or have benefited from knowledge-sharing. I have to believe these train systems were built with outside help and then organic improvement or the opposite. Spain, talk to them.
The issue (at least in Europe) is that there are too many historical train control systems. There are more than 25 different, non-interoperable train control systems currently used across the European rail network.
That's where the EU came in and developed ETCS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Train_Control_System) as a modern alternative. Unfortunately, the EU doesn't have the legislative power to force member states to adopt it and also not the money to bribe them. So ETCS is still competing with the legacy systems.
However, the reason for that crash apparently was the dispatcher who greenlit the cab driver to go full speed ahead after the train control system on that track had crashed even though they knew that another train was reporting that it was unable to restart and get going. Procedures in case of a train control outage are clear: all trains can only move at a max speed of 40Km/h - slow enough to drive and brake on sight.
Instead, that train crashed into the stationary one coming from 200Km/h
> the dispatcher who greenlit the cab driver to go full speed ahead after the train control system on that track had crashed even though they knew that another train was reporting that it was unable to restart and get going
Apologies in advance for what may be a pedantic and possibly dumb question, but is there a failsafe or guardrail against such forced errors?
The contract to make the line ERTMS compliant was published in 2020, with 2024 as completion target. Errors meant it had to be offered again, pushing it to 2025 and then 2026. The crash could have been avoided.
There's definitely international communication, LZB is a German signaling system and the intended 40kph speed limit after system restart is common across Europe.
Japan has had high-speed trains since the 1960's and have had zero passenger fatalities. They must be doing something right.