PRASA: "Nerve Centre" signalling contract awarded

[Steve Appleton]

A rather confused report on signalling upgrades planned for Metrorail Gauteng from Business Day, 24 June 2011. http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/C ... ?id=146722

Rail ‘nerve centre’ contract awarded

Prasa, which owns and operates Metrorail, has awarded Germany’s Siemens a R900m contract to build a "nerve centre" in Gauteng and to upgrade signalling systems

NICKY SMITH
Published: 2011/06/24 07:53:30 AM

THE Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa), which owns and operates Metrorail, has awarded Germany’s Siemens a R900m contract to build a "nerve centre" in Gauteng and to upgrade signalling systems.

The project is expected to improve efficiency and safety on the passenger rail network. More than 1000 people were injured in train accidents in the province in April and May. Train drivers’ trade unions were quick to blame the accidents on outdated infrastructure. Prasa has acknowledged that the system is old — the average age of the rolling stock is 37 years — but has insisted that the accidents were caused by negligent behaviour.

The design work has already started on the Siemens upgrade project, which is the largest of its kind in the 150-year history of passenger rail in SA, Kevin Pillay, the division director of Mobility at Siemens, said yesterday.

The proposed new system would provide for an operations centre in the monitoring and control of traffic on the Prasa network. This "nerve centre" would also centralise information within the passenger rail network in Gauteng. On completion it will take over the operations of at least five other remote centres. "They will become back-up centres for the nerve centre that we will build." Mr Pillay said.

SA has about 25 000 km of track, which is the largest network in Africa, and the 10th largest in the world. The new interlocking system includes sensors and traffic lights designed to make rail networks safer and more reliable. "It’s got traffic light systems and sensors so the intelligent system senses where the train is on the network and sends this information to a control centre where it will tell the operator the track is occupied, so another train can’t be sent on it," Mr Pillay said.

Over the past five years Prasa has spent more than R13bn upgrading its infrastructure. Much of the commuter rail stock has reached the end of its life and Prasa is planning to procure as much as R97bn worth of rolling stock over the next 18 years.

The Siemens project would roll out over the next five years, the company said in a statement. "It will be a turnkey contract from the design phase to operational handover. "The project scope includes the construction of the Gauteng Nerve Centre and the installation of electronic interlocking signalling systems at 15 stations across the country," Siemens said.

Siemens "will procure some of its core signalling equipment from Siemens factories in Germany". However, the rest would be assembled, tested and localised at the company’s Kya Sands premises contributing to job creation, it said.

[Aidan McCarthy]

Sounds very similar to the current CTC colour light signalling system?

[Steve Appleton]

Besides confusing the age and safety of the signalling system with the age and safety of the rolling stock, this report does not make it clear what equipment is being replaced and to what extent. R900 million is not a lot of money to go around if the entire Gauteng Metrorail signalling plant is to be replaced and a new control centre to be established.

A number of questions arise:
They say they plan a new "nerve" centre. What does that mean? Monitoring only or monitoring and centralised control? How will the information get there and how will any control requests get back? Will the nerve centre be fed from the existing CTC offices and equipment? Will the existing CTC offices be given new equipment (most of the equipment in the existing CTC centres is very old and unreliable)?
Will the local interlockings communicate directly with the nerve centre?
Are the existing local interlocking plants to be retained or replaced?
Are they planning to replace the existing track circuit detection (sensors in this report), are they planning to replace the existing signal heads, are they planning to replace the existing aged cabling?
How exactly will the existing CTC centres to be used as back-ups? Who will man them when they are needed and how soon will that staff get there? If there is permanent standby will there not then be double-manning?
Are they planning to install some form of AWS or ATP (I would have thought essential given the recent spate of SPADS and accidents)?
And so on....