Alstom to design French high-speed rail traffic management tool

Following a call to tender launched in 2016, France’s SNCF Réseau selected Alstom to design a new operational traffic management tool.

Alstom will provide its Iconis system, which detects and proposes solutions to manage traffic conflicts, while anticipating the impact of disruptions. Iconis combines the reliability of a standardized solution with the flexibility required for all future evolutions. It is already in use on 9,320 miles of track worldwide, notably in Italy and Denmark, and is currently being deployed in Sweden, and will be adapted to the French network by Alstom’s site at Saint-Ouen.

Initially, the tool will be deployed on the railway lines connecting Paris, Lyon, and Marseille, with commissioning planned for 2019.

SNCF Réseau has launched an extensive program to modernize operational traffic management with a view to supervising train circulation both in normal conditions and during disruptions. The aim of the program is to improve traffic regularity, incident management, and the information provided by rail companies.

Operational traffic management is currently organized on three levels: the national center for traffic operations, the 21 regional operational centers, and signal boxes at the local level.