118 SFBW Stuttgart regional trains to benefit from ETCS and ATO retrofit

Credit: Alstom

Alstom has announced that it has signed a contract with Germany’s Baden-Wuerttemberg State Institute for Rail Vehicles (SFBW) to retrofit 118 regional trains that are operated on the high-traffic Stuttgart network with the European Train Control System (ETCS) and Automatic Train Operation (ATO) digital signalling technology.

As part of the Stuttgart Digital Node lighthouse project, the contract is valued at approximately €130 million and includes an innovation cooperation agreement, software maintenance contract and a contract for further maintenance.

The trains come from several different suppliers and will be upgraded with the European Train Control System (ETCS) Level 2 and 3, as well as Automatic Train Operation (ATO) Level 2 (GoA2) technology. The initial upgrade project will be completed by 2024 and the subsequent upgrade, according to the European Technical Specifications for Interoperability 2022, will be completed by 2027.

While ATO technology has already been implemented across metro and urban rail lines in cities like Paris, the highly automated operation (GoA2) is now being used for the first time in Germany on the basis of ETCS Level 2 in the Stuttgart Digital Node. When completed in 2024, the new signalling technology will increase capacity and frequency on the Stuttgart network, while also making the trains performance more sustainably.

“In addition to equipping Stuttgart’s S-Bahn trains with our latest digital signalling technology, we are pleased to now be retrofitting the network’s regional trains, as well. This will enable us to make an even greater contribution to the Stuttgart Digital Node lighthouse project and to the digitalisation of German rail transport,” says Michael Konias, Head of Digital and Integrated Systems at Alstom for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. “The assignment once again underlines our growth in the field of signalling technology and the positive synergies resulting from the Bombardier Transportation acquisition.”

As part of the agreed innovation cooperation, Alstom and SFBW will also define the requirements for Train Integrity Monitoring (TIM), Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) upgrade capability, Train Capability and Open CCS On-board Reference Architecture (OCORA). The implementation of the developed requirements by Alstom is part of the contract, as is the software maintenance of the regional trains.

The project is being carried out by the Alstom signalling site in Berlin, Germany, in close cooperation with the ETCS competence center in Charleroi, Belgium. Other locations involved in the various project phases are Braunschweig, Salzgitter, Mannheim and Hennigsdorf in Germany, as well as Bangalore, India, Bucharest, Romania and Lyon-Villeurbanne, France. The series installation will take place close to Stuttgart or in Hennigsdorf.