Page 50 - RFC Rhine-Alpine_Annual Report 2016

48 CORRIDOR RHINE-ALPINE – Annual Report 2016
Regulatory Authorities
IV. Working Groups
1 National Safety Authority Working Group (NSA Working Group)
The Infrastructure Managers of RFC Rhine-Alpine stated in 2010 that they were not able to deliver a harmonised cus- tomer requirement specification for the ETCS infrastruc- ture on the corridor. The track-side ERTMS deployment will be specified by each infrastructure manager and the national implementation plan of each country separately. Therefore, the benefit of one harmonised process for the placing into service of the infrastructure on RFC Rhine-Al- pine is not given any more. This fact leads to a change of focus of the working group towards a harmonised pro- cess for the authorisation of placing into service of vehicles (ERTMS onboard).
In December 2013, version 1.0 of the guideline for CCS authorisation was successfully adopted by the NSAs of the corridor and the NSA of Austria (BMVIT) and published on their websites. In December 2016, version 2.0 of the guideline was published.
The NSA WG develops a common understanding of ERTMS technical issues such as errors, different interpretations and open points in order to achieve a common ERTMS standard on RFC Rhine-Alpine. Due to the fact that the Ministries are highly interested in the development of a harmonised authorisation process for placing into service as stated in the Common Declaration of 26 May 2009, the NSA WG decided to give special attention to the pro- cess-related tasks.
In 2016, the NSA WG focused on the following topics:
Track Train System Validation tests
The NSAs continued their discussion with ERA and the sector regarding the necessity of TTSV testing and the legislative requirements within the European legal framework.
Deploying the guideline process to real vehicle projects Meetings with project leaders of two vehicle projects occurred:
Bombardier: TRAXX
Siemens-Alstom: ES 64 F4
APIS due to software modifications
The process of planning coordination is ongoing.
Update of the guideline
– Update of format and content and approval of
the references. Guideline version 2.0 was published
in December.
– Preparation of a case study which will help to
identify further improvements to the guideline.
In order to facilitate the discussion of technical issues immediately, it was agreed in 2012 to open the German Reflection Group on ERTMS for these discussions arising on RFC Rhine-Alpine. As this group meets on a monthly basis, a regular exchange whenever necessary is given.
2 Task Force Interoperability
The Task Force Interoperability (TFI) is a working group aiming at facilitating the authorisation for placing into ser- vice of vehicles in the networks of Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy. The NSA and the Infra- structure Managers of these countries are permanent members of the group.
TFI was established in 2001 with only three member states. In 2007, TFI was incorporated into the IQ-C Group, the pre- decessor of today’s Executive Board of RFC Rhine-Alpine. In their meetings, TFI invites the representatives of vehicle manufacturers (Bombardier, Siemens, Stadler, others welcome) to discuss the authorisation processes of their multi-system vehicles. Moreover, since 2012, represent- atives of the ERA were invited to the meetings as guests, but they attended only one of four meetings in 2016.