Creating our future railway: turning challenges into opportunities

The railway network in Great Britain has seen unprecedented growth in passenger and freight business since privatisation. A million more trains ran and half a billion more passengers travelled by rail in 2012 than ten years previously. Performance has improved and the passenger business sustained double-digit growth through the recession. The challenge is how to provide the additional capacity needed to address overcrowding on many routes in a way that is both affordable and sustainable. This lecture examines how the Rail Technical Strategy has established a vision for our future railway and has supported the development of ambitious plans to deliver the additional capacity and capability needed. The speaker examines the impacts of the 'game changers' identified by the Rail Technical Strategy from a control, command and signalling perspective. He explores the particular relevance that all six game changers (traffic management, energy, whole-system reliability, data and communications, and enabling innovation) are likely to have for the development of control, command and signalling systems for our railways.