Smart Light Rail: integrated speed and position supervision system

ABSTRACT In Hong Kong, the Light Rail (LR) is a manual driving railway involving interface with road traffic. Speed supervision, turnout signal alert, platform duty reminder, fleet management and inter-vehicle distance monitoring have been regarded as effective ways to improve operational safety and customer satisfaction with the LR. Owing to the lack of a single solution for all the aforementioned functions, a novel and cost-effective integration of global positioning system (GPS) and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies, named the integrated speed and position supervision system was designed, which aligns the zero-tolerant culture of the MTR for safety through assisting its well-trained train captains to further improve operational safety. This paper presents accurate speed and location tracking with accuracies of within 3 km/h and 2  m, respectively. It covers both hardware and software designs, and explores both theoretical and practical considerations. To further enable timely reminders, user-friendliness and high reliability, human factor analysis has been conducted and the system conformed to IEC61508 Safety Integrity Level 2, which corresponds to the probability of failure per hour of at most 10−6. With this integrated solution, the customer-centric LR service for a 500,000 daily patronage can be enhanced and the MTR – one of the world’s leading railways – can be evolved to be a smart railway.