Studying a control concept for high-frequency train transport

In the forthcoming decade the capacity of railway passenger transport on the major Dutch corridors has to accommodate a 50% growth. ProRail, The Netherlands' railway manager aims to enable a high-frequency schedule by the year 2012. To safeguard the quality and manageability of traffic, a new steering and control concept has been worked out. The current paper reports on a pre-field test of the concept to identify its usefulness and to come to real-world procedures. The test was in the format of a gaming simulation session involving train drivers, train dispatchers and network controllers. The results show that the control and steering concept has potential, and should be worked out for both the train dispatcher and network controller level. Critical success factors on the train dispatcher level have been identified, which include simple information representation, reduction of the number of telephone calls and an update of the communication protocols with the network controllers.