Railways looks to adapt Japanese software to design train timetable

Indian Railways

Hoping to emulate the efficiency and punctuality of the Shinkansen trains in Japan, the railways is considering adapting a Japanese software to help plan its train timetable, enabling it to account for every second on the railway network, officials said today.

A group of technical experts from Japan held a meeting with officials of the Transformation Cell and Coaching departments today in which a presentation was made on a cloud-based transit scheduling system, TrueLine, developed by Toshiba.

An official said that if all goes well then eventually IR's software-based integrated planning service will be modelled on TrueLine.

"The software is used to maximise utilisation of tracks, engine, manpower and coaches. It will tell us the number of halts a train needs and the time for each halt to ensure punctuality. It will help us plan rolling stock and how best to utilise them. The app has to however be modified in accordance with the Indian scenario," said a ministry official said.

TrueLine is currently being used by the Saitama Railway Corporation, which is a mostly underground rapid transit line in Japan and the Tokyo Waterfront New Transit Waterfront Line. It is controlled entirely by computers with no drivers on board.

The system, the official said, would greatly improve accuracy and would automatically output reports related to creating timetables.

In the latest timetable published by the railways, the national transporter cut short the running time of over 500 long distance trains by up to two hours.

The railways also incorporated "innovative timetabling" under which running time of popular trains was reduce by 15 minutes to two hours and each railway division was given two to four hours for maintenance works. As of now, most of the scheduling work is done manually by the railways.