Reliability of an in‐vehicle warning system for railway level crossings – a user‐oriented analysis

Abstract

This study analyses the reliability of an in-vehicle warning system developed in Finland during 2008-2010. The system is based on the positioning of trains using GPS, calculation of the states of level crossings on a server and in-vehicle equipment that retrieves information about the states of level crossings from the server. Information about the reliability of the system is very relevant for accurate estimation of the impacts of the system and for estimating the potential for improvements to it. The study starts with a description of the system under analysis, continues by defining the concept of reliability and provides an estimate for the reliability of the system from the user point of view. To achieve this objective, the study defines the relevant concepts and describes a methodology for analysis of the reliability of the system. The main input to the analysis of reliability includes a brief overview of existing concepts related to the reliability of in-vehicle ITS systems and empirical data obtained in a field test carried out in southern Finland. The analysis shows that the expected functionality has been achieved, but the reliability level of the pilot system needs improvement, especially reduction in the share of missed alarms.

Analysis of In-Vehicle Warning System for Rail-Road Level Crossings: Case Study in the City of Thessaloniki, Greece

“…Around 2000 serious accidents occur at European Unions' (EU's) rail infrastructure every year. More specifically, RRLC accidents, which are one of the most significant accident categories, constitute the 26 % of all serious accidents in EU during -2014(ERA, 2017 and the 25 % during 2011-2015, excluding suicide events which also take place in railway premises (ERA, 2019). However, during 2010 -2016 there is a gradual decrease of RRLC accidents in the EU, with exception the year 2012 (Report on Railway Safety and Interoperability in the EU, 2018).…”

“…More specifically, in 2014 the cost of the accidents at EU countries was about 1.4 billion euros of which the 103 million concern material damage, the 71 million concern the external cost of the delays due to the accidents and 71 million the cost of the environmental damage (ERA, 2017). Greece is ranked among the last EU countries as far as the economic impact of the serious accidents is concerned, during 2014(ERA, 2017ERA, 2019; Report on Railway Safety and Interoperability in the EU, 2018).…”

Video Analytics for the Detection of Near-Miss Incidents at Railway Level Crossings and Signal Passed at Danger Events

“…To track the position of trains and transmit this information to vehicles a system based on a client-server architecture was proposed in Finland [39,41]. This system uses GPS or…”

“…identifies that the vehicle is within a certain distance to a RLX, it will query the state of the RLX from the server. The state of the RLX is used to warn the driver if the vehicle is travelling toward the RLX and a train is approaching/crossing the RLX [41].…”

“…However, because of the GPS/Galileo GNSS localization errors, the system needs an accurate rail network map to precisely calculate the position of the trains and determine the state of each RLX [39]. In addition, GPRS communication has some negative effects on the reliability of the system [41], including possible disconnection between the train-server data connection, and long communication times for the client-server communication [41]. However, this system was only tested with 2G mobile networks, and the impact of 3G or 4G networks on the reliability of the system were not investigated.…”