http://www.cs.com.cn/ssgs/gsxw/202003/t20200319_6036796.html

Gao Chunhai, Chairman of TCT, said in an exclusive interview with China Securities Journal recently that from the view of investment field and positioning of new infrastructure, the construction of intercity high-speed railway and intercity rail transit will promote the digital and intelligent development of the whole transportation industry by means of technological innovation. TCT is building an intelligent rail transit platform "Tianshu system" based on signal control, which adopts new technologies like 5G+AICDE (the 5th generation mobile communication + artificial intelligence, Internet of things, cloud platform, big data, edge computing) to enable existing equipment and build an intelligent rail transit comprehensive platform.

"More attention on people"

New infrastructure construction (hereinafter referred to as "new infrastructure") specifically includes seven fields: 5G base station construction, ultra-high voltage, intercity high-speed railway and intercity rail transit, new energy vehicle charging pile, big data center, artificial intelligence and industrial Internet.

Gao Chunhai said that the new infrastructure is obviously different from the past traditional "railway infrastructure". The biggest difference is that the new infrastructure pays more attention to industries with scientific and technological contents and represents the direction of new economy high-quality development. "Traditional infrastructure pays attention to things, while new infrastructure pays more attention to people."

Gao Chunhai said that when intercity high-speed railway and intercity rail transit are mentioned, we will be put in mind of “railway infrastructure” firstly. However, from the view of investment field and positioning of new infrastructure, with the development of urbanization in China, rail transit should serve the flow of people among urban agglomerations, focus on how to improve travel efficiency, reduce transfer times and transfer time of passengers, and reduce the overall travel cost. The new infrastructure will enable the existing transportation modes and promote the digital and intelligent development of rail transit.

The Outline for Smart Urban Rail Development of China's Urban Rail Transit was released on March 12, which follows the working approach of both intellectualization and autonomy, and will gradually promote the application and drive the construction of intelligent city rail in the whole industry through demonstration and guidance.

According to the research report of Galaxy Securities, by the end of 2018, the approvable reinvestment for domestic urban rail lines under construction had reached RMB 4.27 trillion. In which, the investment for the unfinished lines is about RMB 2.5 trillion; the investment for approved planned lines is up to RMB 3.89 trillion. On this basis, the newly approved project planning of RMB 470 billion of 2019-2020 is counted in, minus the investment completion of urban rail transit in 2019 (expected over RMB 600 billion), so the currently reserved total investment of urban rail projects is about RMB 6 trillion, with sufficient market space.

Transition to network-based operation

Gao Chunhai believes that the first thing to be solved for intercity high-speed railway and intercity rail transit is independence or isolation between lines and systems, which cannot provide passengers with convenient travel experience and connect with other transportation modes.

At present, most of rail transit is single line construction and single line operation, providing travel services from city to city and from station to station. Complete travel services from the departure station to the destination among multiple lines, i.e., end-to-end network-based travel services cannot be provided. Passengers can only find the best transfer mode through map search, and transfer completely by themselves, which greatly reduces the travel efficiency.

According to Gao Chunhai, rail transit is in dire need of transformation from single line construction and operation to network-based construction and operation. However, the systems are not compatible and dispatch is isolated now, which become key constraints for the development of rail transit network.

Therefore, TCT innovatively puts forward the interconnection solution. At the end of 2018, the major demonstration project of National Development and Reform Commission of signaling system interconnection with independent intellectual property provided by TCT, Chongqing rail transit loop Phase I was officially put into operation, which is the first application of interconnection of urban rail transit signaling system in China. As the technical leader of the demonstration project, TCT led three domestic signal manufacturers to solve world-class key problems in the field of rail transit, and completed the establishment of signaling system interconnection standards under the leadership of China Association of Metros.

It is known that TCT is the first enterprise in China to independently overcome the core technology of CBTC (Communication Based Train Control System). In advance of TCT, the core technology of CBTC was monopolized by overseas manufacturers such as Siemens, Alstom and Thales. At the end of 2010, TCT made the first engineering application of CBTC system in Beijing Yizhuang line, breaking the foreign technical blockade and realizing import substitution.

Build an intelligent transportation platform

With the development of urban agglomerations, bus, subway, intercity rail transit and railway are developing towards real connection or linkage, gradually breaking the predicament of incompatibility and unable to collaborate. Gao Chunhai believes that in order to achieve this goal, system, dispatch, intelligence, network-based operation as well as line network fault emergency management shall be involved.

Therefore, TCT innovatively puts forward solutions such as common train control system, comprehensive dispatching command center, fine dispatching, virtual cooperative formation and environmental perception to boost the interconnection and networking of rail transit.

For example, the common train control system supports the integration of subway, urban rail, intercity and high-speed railway networks, so that passengers can complete cross line travel without transfer; build a comprehensive dispatching command center based on cloud platform to form a service platform supporting various forms of transportation; fine dispatching transforms its concerns from operation to passenger flow and demands, to realize timely transportation of passenger flow and accurate allocation of transport capacity in the network based on big data analysis; virtual cooperative formation, based on 5G communication, builds virtual coupling between trains to realize short-range synchronous operation of trains and improve the transportation capacity; environmental perception, based on sensors like camera and radar, improve the ability of independent environmental perception and maintain the operation ability in case of system degradation.

In September 2019, the full automatic operation system (commonly known as driverless) based on interconnection successfully developed by TCT was firstly applied in Beijing Daxing International Airport Line. The design speed of train for this line is up to 160 km/h, which is the fastest automatic urban line in the world, realizing the transformation of the full automatic operation system from "following" to "leading" relative to the international level, and laying a foundation for the future integration of subway, urban rail, intercity and high-speed railway in China.

Gao Chunhai said that TCT is building an intelligent rail transit platform "Tianshu system" based on signal control, which realizes information sharing for previously isolated systems by the sharing platform, and realizes a "new generation rail transit system" for passengers and operation with intergenerational iteration and cooperation with upstream and downstream enterprises, so as to build an efficient, safe and sustainable regional networking rail transit system solution.