Monday, December 04, 2017

Do we need an expensive and sophisticated train control system for the MRT?

Like Singapore, Hong Kong also paid a lot of money to upgrade their signal system. The average cost is about S$75 million per line. Singapore cost is about $85 million per line, but it is a few years later - probably due to inflation.

Hong Kong also faced problem with signal issues.

My common sense tells me that both countries paid too much to install a sophisticated system that is not necessary and is causing a lot of problems.

The trains run at a maximum speed of 80 kph. That is as fast as a car on the road. Allowing for the time for passengers to board and alight at each station, the average speed of the train is 45 kpm for the entire journey.

If the trains run every 2 minutes, the average distance between the trains is 2 km. That is a very long distance. Do we need a sophisticated and costly signal system to handle this operation?

I prefer to have an onboard collision avoidance system on each train. It will prevent collision.

Apart from this feature, I like to see a signal to tell a train that it is approaching a station, so that the train can slow down, and another signal to guide the train to the exact place to stop on the platform.

These signals are processed locally on the train and do not need to involve the control center.

The only control data that needs to be send by the control center is the speed for the train to take. This may be necessary to synchronise the speed of the various trains, and to ensure that they arrive punctually and are evenly spaced.

If the system is kept simple at the control center, the risk of "signal faults" would probably be minimised. Of course, we could still have local signal faults.

This is my common sense perspective. It can save a lot of money and give less breakdowns.

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