Upgrading the world’s Oldest underground Metro – A

Signalling Engineer’s View

Mike Harvie, Head of Signalling, London Underground

TfL Rail & Underground: The network today

• 7 modes

• 15 lines

• Over 430 stations

• Over 1200km of

track

• 1.6 Billion

Passenger

Journeys/year

• Capital programme:

£1.6 Bn/year

1863

2013

Railway Infrastructure takes time to change

Upgrade plan

• Asset renewal: replacing life-

expired assets with modern

equivalent forms e.g.

conventional signalling to

CBTC

• Capacity: increasing network

peak capacity by 30% through

line upgrade programme: new

trains, track and signalling AND

• Stations: rebuilding busiest

stations: Tottenham Court

Road, Victoria, Bond Street,

Bank, Paddington; upgrading

others with CCTV and better

communication systems

Magnitude of demand – London Underground

4.8million

rail journeys take place every day across Rail &

Underground’s network

54percent

of all UK rail journeys are directly provided by Rail

& Underground, meaning we not only support

travel around London but also connections across

the country

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

2003/04 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13

Demand (Passenger Journeys) Service Volume (Train KMs)

The TfL JourneyLine System Year

Docklands Light

Railway

Seltrac IS from 1995

Jubilee Line Seltrac IS – 30 tph 2011

Victoria Line Invensys DTG-R – 33tph 2011

Northern Line Seltrac IS – up to 30 tph 2014

Hammersmith & City

Line

Seltrac IS (Radio) – up to 32 tph 2022

Circle Line Seltrac IS (Radio) – up to 32 tph 2022

District Line Seltrac IS (Radio) – up to 32 tph 2022

Metropolitan Line Seltrac IS (Radio) – up to 32 tph 2022

Piccadilly Line In Tender phase – GoA3/4 TBC

Waterloo & City Line In Tender phase – GoA3/4 TBC

Central Line In Tender phase – GoA3/4 TBC

Bakerloo Line In Tender phase – GoA3/4 TBC

4LM

DTUP

What do we want ?

More capacity & Reduced journey times

11.1 min

9.6 min

Pre-upgrade Post-upgrade

Average journey time

Victoria line

We replaced trains and signalling to reduce the average journey time by 1 minute and 31 seconds

This saves the average commuter 11.5 hours

travelling time per year

15.4 min

13.8 min

Pre-upgrade Post-upgrade

Average journey time

Northern line

We replaced signalling to reduce the average

journey time by 1 minute and 37 seconds.

This saves the average commuter 12.2 hours

travelling time per year

We replaced signalling to reduce the average

journey time by 1 minute and 49 seconds.

This saves the average commuter 13.7 hours

travelling time per year

13.4 min 11.5

min

Pre-upgrade Post-upgrade

Average journey time

Jubilee line

Delivery – 2010 funding settlement

1969: World’s first Automatic RailwayNow: 650,000 passengers/day

• New 47 x 8 Car ’09TS Fleet with onboard signalling (supplied by Bombardier and Invensys)

• 43 Trains (Peak) – 31 Trains (Off-Peak)• First ATO-on-ATO upgrade in world• Power, depot and other enabling works

Victoria Line Upgrade Jubilee Line Upgrade2

1%

incr

ease

in c

ap

aci

ty

33

% in

crea

se in

ca

pa

city

• Thales S40 moving block ATO system

• 63 trains• 7th car

• Power, depot and many other enabling works

Changes to the railway

(Jubilee & Northern lines)

• Significant train wiring modifications

• In-cab displays introduced

• Trackside signals removed

• CBTC signage introduced

• Inductive loop on track bed

• Secondary train detection system

Jubilee line - planned migration

• Preliminary “dual-fitted area” (DFA) (J1)

• Original plan - 4 small migration stages (J2, J3, J4 & J5)

Original plan

Dual-Fitted Area

Purpose:

• Provide Train Operators with experience of driving

with the in-cab display

• Assist with evidence

to assure final system

Results:

• Identified several issues

– both technical and human factors

• Useful data obtained, but DFA software became

more diverged from the final product.

Jubilee line – final migration

• Preliminary “dual-fitted area” (DFA) (J1)

• Final implementation – 2 migration stages (J234 & J5)

Original plan

Final plan

Systems Testing on Jubilee line

• Partial line closures at weekends– Large number of them

– Inconvenienced large numbers of passengers on a

regular basis

– Not always used effectively

• equipment failures or software errors leading to

testing time being lost

• logistics planning issues

• some weekends ear-marked as available for testing

ended up being used for installation

• Different approach used on Northern line– (details to follow later in presentation)

Final commissioning dates

• DFA – March 2008

• J234 Revenue Service - 29th December 2010

• J5 Revenue Service – 26th June 2011

14

Jubilee reliability trends – first 2 years

Early

Days

Second

Phase

J5

Phase

Reliability

ImprovementOlympics Steady State

Realising the benefits

Key Lessons Learned• “One Team” approach

• Cost of on-railway testing

• Challenge of applying new technology to an existing railway with strong existing standards and operating principles. Need to ensure clear, early definition of:

- signalling principles- operational requirements

• Importance of Stakeholder engagement

• Technology challenges

• Challenge of large migration areas

• Reliability growth before and after commissioning

Northern Line – Growth and Demand

• Busiest line on the London

Underground network with

900,000 customers per day

• 6 branches – most complex

manually operated railway in

Europe

• 18.5% growth in demand in last

five years

Original Northern Line Infrastructure

• Fixed block signalling

up to 50 years old

• Controlled via program

machine architecture

from 1960s, including

hardwired control desks

• 106 trains (1995TS) with performance

downgraded to match old trains (1959TS)– 1.24 ms-2 acceleration (existing 0.9 ms-2)

• Circa 1000 people to be trained

Northern Line Closure Plan

Old plan (2010)

65 closures, 20 of which were full line

16 months of early closing

(Monday – Thursday)

New plan (2011)

16 closures, 8 of which are full line

6 partial line closures during Easter and Christmas

Sunday late starting from 08:30

Northern Line Migration Areas

• 6 migration areas planned

• Commissioned as planned (i.e. no combining of

areas as on Jubilee line)

• New Service Control Centre (covering whole line)

commissioned at same time as NMA1

Performance Monitoring:

Reliability Objective Groups - ROGs• Suite of tests carried out on parts of the system

prior to commissioning into service, typically

during normal traffic hours• ROG1 – train systems

• ROG2 – loops & wayside

• ROG3 – axle counters

• Provided proof that the installed system was

reliable and that identified issues had been fixed

prior to revenue service

• Success was measured against criteria generated

from the final system reliability requirements

ROG2 Output

Other tools

Virtual test trolley• Allows some basic

testing (signal

strength, loop layout,

etc.) without needing

a test train

• No need to keep

traction current on,

so easier access for

parallel activities

NMA1-6

Commissioning dates:

NMA1 – 17/02/2013, NMA2 – 21/06/2013, NMA3 – 25/10/2013,

NMA4 – 17/01/2014, NMA5 – 21/03/2014, NMA6 – 30/05/2014

Reliability

NL reliability – 28 day average (1st year)

27

NL reliability – 28 day average (2nd year)

28

Northern Line Upgrade:

In NumbersThe Project in Numbers

Assets

• 37 New SERs

• Appx 350 km of Loop Cable

• 2 Change Over Cubicles

• 14 Plate Racks

Testing Completed

• 3500 PICO Tests Cases

• 2350 LCT Test Cases

• 1550 Data Comms Test Cases

• 1020 PLC Test Cases

• 1600 VCC Test Cases

• 95 SMC Test Cases

How have we achieved this

• No significant Safety Incidents

• 32 Numbers of Project Gate Reviews

• 44 SRPs

• 39 Weekend closures/possessions

• 1000’s of hours of cancelled/

engineering hours

29

Realisation of Capacity doesn’t have to be painful

Latest Modernisation:

Transforming the Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines

- Learning the Lessons

•Huge increase in capacity

Met 27% / Dist 24% / C&H 65%

•32tph in central section (27 now)

• 1395 cars: 15% more than now

• Air-conditioned trains, LU’s first

• Over 150 of 191 new trains delivered

• Major depot, power, platform

lengthening works

• Paddington-Farringdon is world’s

oldest underground railway (1863)

• Trains up to 50 years old (A Stock)

• Signalling - some parts from 1920s

• 1m+ passengers daily

• 26% of LU total

• Makes up 40% of LU network

Peak Capacity Increase

S ignalsS ignals

S ignals

Trains

Trains

Trains

Met27%

Dis tric t24%

C &H65%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

P eak c apac ity inc reas e delivered

Overview

Migration Plan:

• Consider risk• Start small• Supporting revenue

takes effort• No Cul-De-Sacs

Dedicated Test Track

Progress – Melton RIDC• The baseline configuration is based on

1xVCC and 2xSCSs with the target radios,

axle counters and tags installed trackside.

• The guideway is designed to exercise all train

modes to ensure that the vehicle interface is

fully tested prior to production and revenue

service, this is one of the lessons learnt from

JNUP.

• Dynamic testing with first prototype train

began in 2015 (less than 6 months from

contract award)

• Full system ATO testing has commenced

Migration Sequence

The Next Generation of Upgrades on the London Underground Network

• CBTC will remove the traditional signalling constraints

• CBTC will present latent capacity

• If not seen early, this will generate a further, post CBTC commissioning, series of further enhancements

• Jubilee Line 2 – targeting 36tph with additional trains

• Northern Line 2 – seeking to enhance its capacity by 10-15% with additional trains

• Victoria Line 2 – minor modifications underway to achieve 36tph (April 2017)

Realisation of Capacity - Again

Northern Line

>60% capacity

increase

+19,000 passenger

s per hour

Mid 2020s – New trains on Piccadilly line

Bakerloo line

•25% more capacity

• 8,000 additional passengers per hour

Central line

• 25% more capacity

• 12,000 additional passengers per hour

Waterloo & City line

• 50% more capacity

• 9,000 additional passengers/hour

The Next Generation of Line Upgrades

Conclusion

• London, like many cities is rapidly out-growing its

metro, demanding the highest capacity upgrades

in difficult brownfield sites.

• London Underground has learnt many lessons in

applying CBTC solutions.

• These lessons are being applied on its largest re-

signalling project yet.

• These lessons may also help you in your

challenges.

Questions?