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Dutch timetable to be based on 10-second increments

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Adlington

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International Railway Journal:
DUTCH infrastructure manager Prorail has completed the planning for the 2020 timetable 2020 which comes into force on December 15. This will be the first timetable to be based on 10-second increments rather than per minute which will improve the accuracy of train scheduling.
I guess the 10-second increment will be used only in the working timetable, not in the public one....

Another interesting snippet from the same source:
Following successful trials with 740m-long freight trains in 2018, some freight operators will be allowed to introduce trains of this length for the first time with the start of the 2020 timetable
 
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AlexNL

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I guess the 10-second increment will be used only in the working timetable, not in the public one....
The title is a bit incorrect. ProRail are now planning in 'tienden van minuten' (tenths of minutes) for planning purposes, so they use 6 second intervals. The public timetable will only display hours and minutes though.

Departure times will be rounded down (so 15:20:36 will become 15:20) and arrivals will be rounded up (15:48:24 becomes 15:49).
 

Adlington

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Thanks for the clarification.
Anyway, running trains at 10 or 6 second intervals seems a bit hairy to me....
 

AlexNL

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The primary reason for this, I think, is to squeeze more capacity out of the existing infrastructure.

After the Amsterdam train collision in 2012, the norms were tightened when it comes to how trains are planned and routed. For example, it's no longer permitted for a train to encounter a scheduled red halfway between two stations. This meant that trains would have to be held longer at the preceding station, or be timetabled with a lower speed. However, this eats up capacity.

By planning in 6-second increments, the planners can squeeze out more capacity of the existing infrastructure as they can more closely plan train movements over the same bit of track.

In reality it won't make much of a difference to passengers. Trains are still announced on whole minutes only and there will always be some slack in the timetable to recover small delays.
 

Roast Veg

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UK mainline is run to the half minute, LU is to the quarter minute. For very short sections you can save a small amount of time in the timetable quite safely, which can build up to quite a lot over the course of a day.
 

axlecounter

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The primary reason for this, I think, is to squeeze more capacity out of the existing infrastructure.

After the Amsterdam train collision in 2012, the norms were tightened when it comes to how trains are planned and routed. For example, it's no longer permitted for a train to encounter a scheduled red halfway between two stations. This meant that trains would have to be held longer at the preceding station, or be timetabled with a lower speed. However, this eats up capacity.

Wait, can you expand on this? What do you mean by “scheduled red”? Seems like an enormous capacity-eater!
 

AlexNL

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Wait, can you expand on this? What do you mean by “scheduled red”?
There used to be cases in the timetable where one train was expected to stop at a signal at danger, for example at a flat junction where a conflicting move has to be made and one train is given priority over another. This was one of the factors which contributed to the Amsterdam Sloterdijk train collision.

After that collision, the planning guidelines were reviewed and adjusted. It's no longer permitted for trains to have to come to a stop at places like this. If everything is running to play, drivers should see greens all the way from one station to the next.

An important underlying reason for this is that the majority of the Dutch railway network is not equipped with fail-safe train protection systems. ATB-EG, the legacy train protection system, does not prevent trains from going through a red (it isn't designed to). ATB-Vv, a patch designed to mitigate the growing number of SPADs, does provide train-stop functionality but is not installed at every signal. Furthermore, it's not a failsafe system - if a beacon is broken it won't do anything to stop a train.

Seems like an enormous capacity-eater!
It is. Since trains aren't allowed to be held en-route (not even at a platform entry signal), trains are timetabled to remain longer at the previous station or to drive at lower speeds. This eats up capacity.

By planning in shorter intervals, planners can use the existing infrastructure more effectively as they can now make a planning where trains aren't expected to run into reds, and thus -in theory- can run faster.

We'll have to see how it all plays out in reality. Having trains run right time to a six second interval is neigh-on impossible if you ask me :)
 
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