How Virtual Coupling can bring the needed rail capacity for the future
Image: Marcin Jozwiak, Unsplash
As railways are viewed as key to sustainable mobility, the increase of rail’s modal share for both passenger and freight transport will cause congestion problems on many national and urban networks. Virtual Coupling promises to be a game-changer technology for accommodating more trains and increasing service flexibility. Nevertheless, gaps in technological knowhow and regulations are slowing down its adoption.
Want to read more?
You have read all of your free premium articles for this month. Please become a subscriber to keep reading.
Subscribe now!
Take advantage of our exclusive offer to get full access to all premium content.
Where is the benefit as the essential purpose of virtual coupling is to disconnect physically trains so they can share a route, then separate. At junction, due to signalling and physical timings, the following train has to wait for the signalling & switch to route it. Exactly like a normal signalling system : routes can be set one after the other.
2nd part : You may “virtually couple” for 1000 km, if you have 1 switch disconnecting the trains, the interest is lost. That is written here “Therefore, junctions will need to be faster in setting their switches in order to allow faster direction changes.” If junctions are faster, it will imporove in the same way movements of trains following each other under ETCS.