The Rhine-Alpine Corridor is one of Europe's busiest freight routes, connecting the North Sea ports of Belgium and the Netherlands with the Mediterranean port of Genoa.

As one of nine defined Rail Freight Corridors across member states, it also has strategic importance in the EU's long-term goal to reduce road traffic by encouraging a 'shift to rail'.

To support higher capacity on this route and remove bottlenecks, the management board has committed to the deployment of ERTMS on the full length of the corridor.

In 2021 Ricardo was appointed by DB Netz AG, Germany's national railway infrastructure manager, to provide Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI) certification alongside Independent Safety Assessment (ISA) and Assessment Body (AsBo) safety assessment services for the German sections of the Rhine – Alpine Corridor.

Between 2013 and 2016 Ricardo provided Notified Body (NoBo) services, together with Certifer, for the implementation of ETCS throughout the Belgian section of the European freight 'Corridor C'.

'Corridor C' is a route that connects North Sea ports such as Antwerp to the industrial centres of central and southern Europe. As a cross-border route its infrastructure is required to be certified against the Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSIs), the common standards to be observed on all new - or renewed - European mainline routes. 

Siemens had already been chosen to supply the hardware and software that would provide a seamless, interoperable control system that could be used by vehicles from all member states that carried the corresponding onboard equipment.

This new control system was also required to supplement the legacy signalling and Automatic Train Protection systems in place.

Central to the entire programme is the ‘Core’ with a new signalling design to cater for up to 24 trains per hour.

Most metro systems would turn to Communications Based Train Control (CBTC) to manage the level of traffic intended for the Core because CBTC is designed for the stop-start nature of metros.

However, Thameslink uses ETCS as its standard for signalling. Thameslink developed the concept of an ETCS railway overlaid on a conventional signalling system to deliver a ‘metro style’ operation.

The high capacity is achieved through two new features:

• ETCS allowing the implementation of shorter block sections in a conventionally signalled area, in particular around stations
• The first use of an Automatic Train Operation (ATO) with ETCS on the mainline railway, to allow consistent train driving

In line with the planned rollout of ETCS on Dordrecht station, Qbuzz is obtaining ETCS-equipped trainsets. Operations will start under STM-ATB and later continue (partially) in Level 2 when the ETCS trackside becomes operational. Ricardo supports Qbuzz with the rolling stock procurement and the organizational changes needed for the future ERTMS operations.

Using our experience with rolling stock procurement support and ETCS, Ricardo helped Qbuzz to define the right requirements for tendering and will continue to support during the design, production, testing and operational implementation of the new vehicles. On the organizational side, areas of support include ECM, CSM REA, Key Management and chain monitoring.
 
The benefits for Qbuzz: A new rolling stock fleet equipped with ETCS according to the latest Baseline 4 specifications. And a smooth transition, first to ATB operations via STM-ATB and later to ETCS Level 2 operations.