2.DEFINITION OF SUBSYSTEM AND SCOPEU.K.
2.1. Function within the scope of the TSI U.K.
The subsystem Telematics Applications for Freight is defined in Annex II of the Directive 2008/57/EC (1), Section 2.5 (b).
It includes in particular:
applications for freight services, including information systems (real-time monitoring of freight and trains),
marshalling and allocation systems, whereby under allocation systems is understood train composition,
reservation systems, whereby here is understood the train path reservation,
management of connections with other modes of transport and production of electronic accompanying documents.
2.2. Functions outside the scope of the TSI U.K.
Payment and invoicing systems for customers are not within the scope of this TSI, nor are such systems for payment and invoicing between various service providers such as railway undertakings or infrastructure managers. The system design behind the data exchange in accordance with Chapter 4.2 (Functional and technical specifications of the subsystem), however, provides the information needed as a basis for payment resulting from the transport services.
The long term planning of the timetables is outside the scope of this Telematics Applications TSI. Nevertheless at some points there will be reference to the outcome of the long term planning in so far as there is a relationship with the efficient interchange of information required for the operation of trains.
2.3. Overview of the subsystem description U.K.
2.3.1. Involved Entities U.K.
This TSI takes into account the present service providers and the various possible service providers of the future involved in freight transport such as (this list is not exhaustive):
Wagons
Locomotives
Drivers
Switching and Hump shunting
Slot selling
Shipment management
Train composition
Train Operation
Train monitoring
Train controlling
Shipment monitoring
Inspections & Repair of Wagon and/or Locomotive
Customs clearance
Operating Intermodal Terminals
Haulage management
Some specific service providers are defined explicitly in Directives 2012/34/EU (3), 2008/57/EC (1) and 2004/49/EC (9). Since these directives have to be taken into account, this TSI considers in particular the definition of:
Infrastructure Manager (IM) (Directive 2012/34/EU (3)) means any body or firm responsible in particular for establishing, managing and maintaining railway infrastructure, including traffic management and control-command and signalling; the functions of the infrastructure manager on a network or part of a network may be allocated to different bodies or firms. Where the infrastructure manager, in its legal form, organisation or decision-making functions, is not independent of any railway undertaking, the functions referred to in Sections 2 and 3 of Chapter IV shall be performed respectively by a charging body and by an allocation body that are independent in their legal form, organisation and decision-making from any railway undertaking;
Based on this definition, this TSI regards an IM as the service provider for the allocation of paths, for controlling/monitoring the trains and for train/path related reporting.
Applicant (Directive 2012/34/EU (3)) means a railway undertaking or an international grouping of railway undertakings or other persons or legal entities, such as competent authorities under Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007 and shippers, freight forwarders and combined transport operators, with a public-service or commercial interest in procuring infrastructure capacity;
Railway Undertaking (Directive 2004/49/EC (9)) means railway undertaking as defined in Directive 2001/14/EC, and any other public or private undertaking, the activity of which is to provide transport of goods and/or passengers by rail on the basis that the undertaking must ensure traction; this also includes undertakings which provide traction only;.
Based on this definition, this TSI regards the RU as the service provider for operating trains.
Regarding the allocation of a train path for running a train Article 38 of the Directive 2012/34/EU (3) also has to be taken into account:
Infrastructure capacity shall be allocated by an infrastructure manager. Once allocated to an applicant, it shall not be transferred by the recipient to another undertaking or service.
Any trading in infrastructure capacity shall be prohibited and shall lead to exclusion from the further allocation of capacity.
The use of capacity by a railway undertaking when carrying out the business of an applicant which is not a railway undertaking shall not be considered as a transfer.
In relation to the communication scenarios between infrastructure managers and applicants in the execution mode of a transport, only the IM and the RU have to be considered and not all types of applicants, which may be relevant for the planning mode. In the execution mode a defined IM — RU relationship is always given, for which the message exchange and the information storage is specified in this TSI. The definition of an applicant and the resulting path allocation possibilities remain uninfluenced.
Various services have to be provided for a freight transport. One for example is the provision of wagons. This service can be related to a fleet manager. If this service for a transport is one of the services offered by the RU, the RU acts also as fleet manager. A fleet manager again can manage his own wagons and/or wagons from another keeper (another service provider for freight wagons). The needs for this kind of service provider are taken into account independent of whether the legal entity of the fleet manager is an RU or not.
This TSI does not create new legal entities and does not oblige an RU to involve external service providers for services which the RU itself offers but it does name, where necessary, a service by the name of a related service provider. If the service is offered by an RU, the RU acts as the service provider for that service.
When taking into account the needs of a customer, one of the services is to organise and manage the transport line according to the commitment to the customer. This service is provided by the Lead Railway Undertaking (Lead RU or LRU). The LRU is the single point of contact for the customer. If more than one railway undertaking is involved in the transport chain, the LRU is also responsible for the co-ordination with the other railway undertakings.
This service can also be undertaken by a forwarder or by any other entity.
The involvement of an RU as LRU can differ from one type of transport flow to another. In the Intermodal business the managing of capacity in block trains and the preparing of waybills is done by an Intermodal service integrator, who could then be customer for the LRU.
The main point, however, is that the RUs and the IMs and all other Service Providers (in the sense as defined in this Annex) must work together, either through cooperation and/or open access, as well as through efficient interchange of information, to deliver seamless services to the customer.
2.3.2. Considered Processes U.K.
This TSI for the railway freight transport industry is limited in accordance with Directive 2008/57/EC (1) to IMs and RUs/LRUs with reference to their direct customers. Under contractual agreement the LRU shall provide information to the Customer in particular:
Path information.
Train Running Information on agreed reporting points, including at least departure, interchange/handover and arrival points of the contracted transport.
Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) to the final destination including yards and intermodal terminals.
Service Disruption. When the Lead RU learns about a service disruption, it shall deliver to the Customer in due time.
For the delivery of this information, the respective TAF compliant messages are defined in Chapter 4.
In the operation of freight services, the activity of an LRU, regarding a consignment, starts with the receipt of the consignment note from its customer and, for example, for wagon loads with the release time of the wagons. The LRU creates a preliminary trip plan (based on experience and/or contract) for the transport journey. If the LRU intends to have the wagon load in a train under Open Access mode (the LRU operates the train for the complete journey), the preliminary trip plan is per se the final one. If the LRU intends to put the wagon load in a train which involves the cooperation of other RUs, he first has to find out which RUs he should address and at what time an interchange between two successive RUs can occur. The LRU then prepares the preliminary consignment orders individually for each RU as subsets of the full consignment note. The consignment orders are specified in Chapter 4.2.1 (Consignment Note data).
The addressed RUs check the availability of the resources for the operation of the wagons and the availability of the train path. The responses from the various RUs enable the LRU to refine the trip plan or to start the interrogation anew — perhaps even with other RUs — until the trip plan finally fits customer requirements.
The RUs/LRUs must in general have, at minimum, the capability of,
DEFINING: services in terms of price and transit times, wagon supply (where applicable), wagon/Intermodal unit information (location, status and the wagon/Intermodal unit related estimated time of arrival ‘ETA’), where shipments can be loaded on empty wagons, containers etc.,
DELIVERING: the service that has been defined in a reliable, seamless manner through the use of common business processes and linked systems. There must be a capability for RUs, IMs and other service providers and stakeholders such as customs to exchange information electronically,
MEASURING: the quality of the service delivered compared to what was defined. i.e. billing accuracy against price quoted, actual transit times against commitments, wagon ordered against supplied, ETAs against actual arrival times,
OPERATING: in a productive manner in terms of utilisation: train, infrastructure and fleet capacity through the use of business processes, systems and data exchange required to support wagon/Intermodal unit and train scheduling.
The RUs/LRUs as an applicant must also provide (through contracts with IMs) the required train path and must operate the train within their journey section. For the train path they may use already booked paths (in planning mode) or they have to request an ad hoc train path from the infrastructure manager(s) (IMs) relevant for the journey section(s) over which the RU operates the train. In Appendix I an example is given for the path request scenario.
The path ownership is also important for the communication during the train running between IM and RU. The communication must always be based on train and path number, whereby the IM communicates with the RU, who has booked the train path on his infrastructure (see also Appendix I).
If an RU provides the complete journey A — F (Open Access by RU, no other RUs are involved), then each IM involved communicates directly with this RU only. This ‘open access’ by the RU can be realised by booking the train path via ‘One Stop Shop’ or in sections with each IM directly. The TSI takes both cases into account as it is shown in Chapter 4.2.2.1: Path Request, Preliminary remarks.
The dialogue process between RUs and IMs for establishing a train path for a freight train is defined in Chapter 4.2.2 (Path Request). This function refers to Article 48(1) of Directive 2012/34/EU (3). The dialogue process excludes obtaining the licence for an RU providing services in accordance with Directive 2001/13/EC (10), the certification according to Directive 2012/34/EU (3) and access rights according to Directive 2012/34/EU (3).
In Chapter 4.2.3 (Train Preparation) the information exchange relating to the train composition and the train departure procedure is defined. The data exchange during the running of a train in the case of normal operation is given in Chapter 4.2.4 (Train Running Forecast) and for exceptions the messages are defined in Chapter 4.2.5 (Service Disruption Information). All these messages are exchanged between RU and IM and based on trains.
For a customer the most important information is the estimated time of arrival (ETA) for his shipment. From the information exchange between LRU and IM (in case of Open Access) an ETA can be calculated. In the case of cooperation mode with various RUs, the ETA and also the estimated times of interchange (ETIs) can be determined from the message exchange between RUs and IMs and provided to the LRU by the RUs, (Chapter 4.2.6 Shipment ETI/ETA).
Also based on the information exchange between IM and RU, the LRU knows for example:
when the wagons departed from or arrived at a yard or at defined locations (Chapter 4.2.7 Wagon Movement),
when the responsibility for the wagons was transferred from one RU to the next RU in the transport chain (Chapter 4.2.8 Interchange Reporting).
Based not only on the data exchange between IM and RU, but also from the data exchange between RUs and LRU, various statistics may be evaluated
for — in the medium term — planning the production process in greater detail, and
for — in the long term — carrying out strategic planning exercises and capacity studies (e.g. network analyses, definition of siding and marshalling yards, rolling stock planning), but above all
for improving the quality of the transport service and productivity (Chapter 4.2.9 Data Exchange for Quality Improvement).
The handling of empty wagons takes on particular relevance when considering interoperable wagons. In principle there is no difference in the handling of loaded or empty wagons. The transport of empty wagons is also based on consignment orders, whereby the fleet manager for these empty wagons must be considered as a customer.
2.3.3. General remarks U.K.
An information system is only as good as the reliability of the data within it. Therefore the data that plays a decisive role in the forwarding of a consignment, a wagon or a container must be accurate and captured economically — which means that the data should be entered into the system only once.
Based on this, the applications and messages of this TSI avoid the multiple manual data input by access to already stored data e.g. the rolling stock reference data. The requirements regarding the rolling stock reference data are defined in Chapter 4.2.10 (The Main Reference Data). The specified Rolling Stock Reference Databases must allow easy access to the technical data. The contents of the databases must be accessible, based on structured access rights depending on privilege, to all IMs, RUs and Fleet managers, in particular for purposes of fleet management and rolling stock maintenance. They must contain all transport critical technical data such as:
Identification of rolling stock,
Technical/design data,
Assessment of compatibility with the infrastructure,
Assessment of relevant loading characteristics,
Brake relevant characteristics,
Maintenance data,
Environmental characteristics.
In the Intermodal transport business at various points (called Gateways) a wagon is not only connected to another train, but also the Intermodal unit may be moved from one wagon to another. As a consequence it is not sufficient to work with only a trip plan for wagons and therefore a trip plan for the Intermodal units must also be drawn up.
In Chapter 4.2.11 (Various Reference Files) some reference files and various databases are listed, among them, the Wagon and Intermodal Unit Operational Database. This database contains the operational status data of the rolling stock, the weight and dangerous goods information, information related to Intermodal units and the location information.
The TSI for Telematics Applications subsystem for freight services defines the required information, which has to be exchanged between the different partners involved in a transport chain, and permits a standard mandatory data exchange process to be installed. It shows also the architecture strategy for such a communication platform. This is outlined in Chapter 4.2.12 (Networking & Communication) which takes into account:
the interface to the subsystem Operation and Traffic Management referred to in Article 5(3) of Directive 2008/57/EC (1),
the requirements for the content of the Network Statement, which are set out in Directive 2012/34/EU (3), Article 27 and Annex IV,
the information available on the freight wagon rolling stock and the requirements regarding maintenance from the Rolling Stock TSI.
There is no direct data transmission from the subsystem Telematics Applications for Freight Services into the train, to the driver or to parts of the Control Command and Signalling subsystem and the physical transmission network is a completely different one from the network used by the Command Control and Signalling subsystem. The ERTMS/ETCS system is using GSM-R. In this open Network the ETCS specifications clarify that safety is achieved with the appropriate management of open networks hazards in the EURORADIO protocol.
The interfaces to the structural subsystems Rolling Stock and Control Command are only given via the Rolling Stock Reference Databases (Chapter 4.2.10.2: The Rolling Stock Reference Databases), which are under the control of the keepers. The interfaces to the subsystems Infrastructure, Control Command and Energy are given with the path definition (Chapter 4.2.2.3: Path Details message) from the IM, where infrastructure related values for the train are specified, and with the information provided by the IMs regarding restrictions in the infrastructure (Chapter 4.2.2 Path Request and Chapter 4.2.3 Train Preparation).