Refurbishment
Chris Hay examines the network requirements for unmanned rail stations T
he current trend in transport today is pointing more and more towards increasing numbers of stations being unmanned.
We are seeing the replacement of the traditional manned ticket office with automated ticket machines and voice connection to a call centre for those who need additional information. The cost benefits of this for the Toc's are easy to understand but it's important that they continue to provide a high level of service and safety to passengers. In order to make this possible, and effective, the station needs to have a high-performance resilient network in place. The network for an unmanned station must work well for both parties. The central office needs to be able to effectively manage the station from a distance and the passengers need to be able to get the information they need quickly and easily. By implementing a remotely managed automated ticketing system combined with an advanced IP surveillance system utilising cutting- edge analytics, the station can continue to provide both with a good service. Add a connected audio system and help points to this network and the passenger experience can feel as if the station is still manned.
The main passenger concern about remote and unmanned stations is that they don't feel as safe as manned stations. A well-run IP surveillance system can be built into the same network as the ticketing and entrance gate systems, which helps provide passengers with peace of mind. A system currently installed on the rail network in Melbourne, Australia, links 220 stations with a total of 2,500 IP cameras. Although only a handful are unmanned, this system is ideally suited for such stations as it offers the ability to view images from any camera, located in any position and to save the video footage both on site and remotely. The system currently includes 600TB of storage that will grow as the number of cameras around the network grows.
Egress for travellers
As a general rule, unmanned stations don't have ticket barriers as people are needed to manually open them when customers have issues with their tickets. However, in Japan, Allied Telesis implemented a system which provides full remote management of both ticket
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machines and entrance gates. The station manager has the assurance that only those with tickets can access the platform, but at the same time the remote management system means that egress is assured for travellers who have ticketing problems. The network for the Kobe electric railway in Japan was implemented by Allied Telesis and uses a combination of virtual chassis stacking and ethernet protected switch ring (ESPR) technology to ensure the whole system is immune to failure. This was achieved by using the virtual chassis stacking technology at the station to protect against local switch failure, allowing traffic to be re-routed to another switch in a fault condition, and
the ESPR technology between stations, to protect against cable failure sending traffic via a different path if a fibre is damaged. As a result, any failure in the network will only cause a downtime of around 50ms (0.05 seconds). To many passengers, an unmanned station means a non-existent service, with nowhere and no-one from whom to get help, and the prospect of standing on an empty platform, often without any updates on the service they're waiting for. However with the right network to support it, unmanned stations can offer
impressive levels of service. • Chris Hay is Pre Sales Engineer at Allied Telesis
www.alliedtelesis.co.uk
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