Depots offer ideal conditions for early-stage autonomous rail operation: no public access, low speeds, and tightly regulated processes. This is the premise behind AStriD, a German mFUND-funded research project that ran from October 2019 to December 2022, demonstrating the technical feasibility and assessing the economic potential of full depot automation.

The project, coordinated by Siemens Mobility, prototyped a fully automated tram depot based on an autonomously operating tram and a digital depot environment, developed together with ViP Verkehrsbetrieb Potsdam. The work covered the required sensor and localisation technologies, data exchange between the systems involved, and the regulatory and approval framework for autonomous tram operation — questions that needed to be addressed from the outset rather than retrofitted once the technology was in place.

By analysing existing processes at the ViP depot, the project team identified concrete use cases with automation potential — for instance automated washing, supply, and stabling runs. These findings were abstracted and documented using standardised description methods to ensure they could be transferred to other depots, not just applied to the specific Potsdam site. Building on this, the prototype implementation delivered an exemplary system architecture for an automated depot, providing a foundation for future deployments, and defined the further development work still required for serial implementation.

Several specific outcomes are worth highlighting. On the technical side, findings on obstacle detection, the approval of AI-based software, and standardisation are now feeding into ongoing follow-up projects, including BerDiba, Safetrain, and ERJU — meaning AStriD's results are continuing to shape current research rather than ending with the project itself. On the economic side, the project confirmed that significant efficiency gains in depot operations are plausible, though their precise scale could not yet be reliably quantified at project completion — a candid acknowledgment that technical feasibility and economic certainty are two different milestones. 

On the regulatory side, AStriD produced a roadmap outlining the legal requirements for autonomous tram operation, identifying where legislative action is still needed and drawing explicit parallels to the regulatory path already taken for autonomous driving in road transport.

The consortium brought together Siemens Mobility as coordinator, ViP Verkehrsbetrieb Potsdam as depot operator, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) for digitalisation and process automation expertise, IKEM for legal and economic analysis, and Codewerk for data and systems integration. Total project volume came to €4.3 million, 61% of which was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Transport.

What makes AStriD a useful reference point today is less the specific tram involved and more the methodology: a structured way of identifying which depot processes are realistically automatable, documenting that knowledge so it transfers beyond a single site, and treating regulatory groundwork as part of the technical roadmap rather than an afterthought.

QUIETERRAIL is an Europe's Rail exploratory research project addressing noise and vibration in railway infrastructure through a whole-system approach. Its recently published deliverable D4.1 presents the outcomes of a consultation process with infrastructure managers and railway stakeholders, mapping representative track configurations, relevant cost data, technical constraints, and available mitigation measures.

Central to the deliverable is the establishment of a set of optimisation criteria — covering noise and vibration performance, life-cycle costs, RAMS parameters, and health, environmental and societal impacts — designed to underpin a web-based decision-support tool for infrastructure planning and maintenance.

Extreme weather events — heavy rainfall, flooding, heatwaves — are becoming more intense due to climate change and increasingly disrupt both rail and road infrastructure. Yet a systematic, comparable way to capture and assess these climate-induced damages has so far been missing.

A new project by DZSF (Deutsches Zentrum für Schienenverkehrsforschung) sets out to close this gap. It will develop indicators and damage functions covering both physical infrastructure damage and the operational impacts of climate-related events, applying them in case studies across rail and road. The methodology will be documented in a practical user guide, enabling climate-related damage potentials to be assessed systematically and quantitatively.

The results are intended to support the goals of Germany's national climate adaptation strategy (DAS 2024) and, following evaluation by the respective transport sectors, to be gradually prepared for practical application — for example in the planning, prioritisation, and approval of adaptation measures, or in monitoring and reporting systems. They are also expected to form a basis for further research and analysis by industry practitioners.

Project duration: 30 months. Planned start: Q4 2026.

Strategic growth

Increase your market presence and generate qualified leads through in-depth market analysis, efficient process and innovation management, and targeted show marketing.

Funding Opportunities

Take advantage of government support programs such as INQA coaching to advance your corporate strategies with financial assistance.

Digital excellence

Comprehensive service management and professional IT security consulting enable you to optimize your business processes and protect your systems effectively.