Description
Profiting from the wave of modernization in the global rail industry
To remain capable of satisfying future transportation requirements in a competitive environment, the
global rail industry is faced with the task of switching to digital technologies as quickly as possible.
To reach this goal, the existing rail infrastructure needs to be brought up to speed first which results
in a massive need for modernization of the technical infrastructure – with rail control technology
playing a major role. This urge for quick modernization represents a huge challenge to the rail industry
as it has to fight on several fronts at the same time: from tight budgets, over heavily diversified
historically grown automation architectures and thousands of outdated rail track kilometres, up
to a complex landscape of national norms and approval processes. The most cost- and timeefficient
approach for the global rail industry to overcome the immense modernization backlog and
to achieve its ambitious growth goals lies in using proven technology and components already available
on the market. This whitepaper takes a look at the status and the challenges of rail infrastructure
modernization in different parts of the world with a focus on rail control and safety technology. It
then describes what technological trends are currently shaping the industry. Finally, the whitepaper
outlines how system integrators can develop their own interlocking, level-crossing and signalling
solutions with a significantly reduced time-to-market in order to profit of the increased demand for
control solutions due to the wave of modernization currently happening in the global rail industry.
