Intelligent Decision-Making on the Use of Support Commands in Automatic Route Setting

Railway transport management has changed dramatically over the past 50 years. The advent of computer technology and the capacity for information transmission brought greater safety and the ability to remotely control interlocking devices. These enable the centralisation of railway transport management, leading to higher operational efficiency and reduced staffing costs. At the same time, this technological progress has enabled the development of additional automation functions, which we can abbreviate as ARS (Automated Route Setting). The international designation Automatic Route Setting (ARS) includes actions that enable the automation tool to execute instructions to the signal box without the intervention of operating personnel (the dispatcher). Their importance increases with line speed and the size of the remotely controlled area. Thanks to them, the dispatcher gains time because the ARS can automatically resolve some operational situations or allow the dispatcher to address them in advance, thereby distributing the workload over a wider time window. However, the interlocking system itself remains the primary safety mechanism and will prevent ARS if any element of the infrastructure is occupied. At the same time, it is not possible to automate safety-critical functions that require direct assistance from the operating personnel. In the article, the authors analysed functions in which ARS is currently widely used. In the next part, they focused on the possible expansion of the palette of these functions that could be included in the ARS regime using multi-criteria analysis. The WSA method was applied using data obtained from routine users of the system. This approach enabled the incorporation of practical operational experience into the evaluation process and provided an empirical basis for assessing and prioritising the analysed functions. The next step was a safety-critical analysis and determination of the conditions under which they could be included in the ARS regime. The safety-critical functions are left aside. It is assumed that these will still have to be performed by the operator, not by the ARS. Detailed implementations and quantification of their impacts on the dispatcher’s activities are then carried out for selected ARS functions. The analysis therefore yields a prioritised ranking of ARS functions, indicating the order in which their implementation would be most appropriate from an operational perspective. This ranking provides a systematic basis for the phased deployment of ARS functionalities, considering their expected operational benefits and practical applicability in railway traffic management. The last part of the article is a look into the future, because the development in the field of safe communication between the train and the infrastructure (V2I) and the transmission of valid information provides many new challenges not only in the field of ARS itself, but also in the optimisation of the entire process of managing and organising rail transport. If we can use the ARS functions today, it is only a matter of technical development to be able, for example, to guide trains to the exact time when a train route will be built for this train. This will also enable optimising the train’s energy consumption and tracking capacity use. The ideal state is when the infrastructure fully communicates with the train in GoA4 mode and optimises both the train’s ride and the use of the infrastructure.