Strong developments for rebuilding the Danish railway

In 2005, the Danish railway experienced a major crisis, suffering massive delays due to poor track standards and failing signalling systems. Two issues were behind the problems; the railway had been, and was, under-funded and there was a significant lack of technical and managerial control of the infrastructure. Lack of control working in concert with money shortage led to an accelerated degradation.

As chance will have it, this crisis surfaced into public view in 2005 – two years after a much celebrated political agreement for the future railway from 2005 – 2014. This means that Rail Net Denmark, the state owned railway asset management company, was then facing general political mistrust. This fact was further augmented by multiple critical reports from the state auditor.

It was clear – as it had indeed been in 2003 – that the situation could only be faced by a long-term financial plan for sensible railway reinvestment planning. This was the idea in 2003, but lack of sufficient data ironically also made this plan prone to underinvestment rather than the desired reliable plan for renewal of the Danish tracks. So, even with a 10 year investment plan, Rail Net Denmark was not in a position where a credible and auditable financing scheme could be produced.

Luckily, the 10 year funding scheme had the precondition that new documentation should be delivered in 2005 by Rail Net Denmark, the aim being to strengthen the documentation for the investment needs of the railway.

And then there was documentation. The evaluation of the investment needs was produced and exceeded the current 10 year plan with approximately 4 billion DKK. The investment plan that the politicians had happily been convinced was a major increase in railway funding had turned out to be just barely what was required.

The main reason for the additional need for funding was the inclusion of all infrastructure elements such as secondary tracks, sub soil, culverts, other structures, safety hazards, etc. What had been in the plan previously included all the big renewal investments. But it is in fact all the small ones that make the railway run everyday.

The political pressure was intense, and Banedanmark was sent back to further strengthen the case that was still not perceived as sufficiently convincing. Working intensely through to the summer of 2007, where a financing scheme for the remaining eight years was politically sanctioned. It involved a 4.2 billion DKK increase in our funding, and a clear set of measurable targets.

In search of a solid place

The main reason why Rail Net Denmark eventually had success in securing the needed funds was that we focussed on strengthening our analytical and modelling skills. Surprisingly, these skills appear to be limited, not only in the Danish rail sector, but also widely in the international rail sector.

In the beginning, Rail net Denmark were unable to produce credible projections of future infrastructure performance and costs, and that surprised me considering that we are dealing with 150+ year old technologies. In my search I’ve found only limited traditions for building reinvestment and maintenance models for any asset type.

Getting it right with asset management

Therefore it was adamant for Banedanmark to strengthen the model capabilities based on an asset management system. Modelling the behaviour of the railway was, in 2005, something we did when the politicians needed documentation for sending us more money – something they had not really requested before.

But it is quite obvious that politicians, like any other owner, want to know what the money is used for. Therefore, it is now a top management imperative for us to maintain degradation models linked to infrastructure performance, reinvestment needs and our maintenance and renewal planning. Furthermore, developing our analytical skills is today a core competence that we are continuously working on refining.

Defining the top priorities

Prioritisation is now our primary focus. We are facing budget constraints while at the same time being requested to ensure a high punctuality, low travel times and avoid train accidents. The trick is to prioritise where the risk of not performing is highest, and reduce the risk elsewhere.

To do this we built the evaluation decision criteria on how to prioritise. We focussed again on modelling objective and non-political criteria. The main criterion was a geographically uniform focus, and we ended up with the criteria that had the highest punctuality for most passengers and trains.

We returned over three months in our working meetings in the National Political Committee for Transport to this priority discussion. Considering the political sensitivity of such a change in priorities, our politicians bought in to the model and have supported the result since.

Considering the challenges

Even though we have had a great success with changing the way we work, there have been some challenges that we didn’t entirely think through. It was our own and the market’s ability to handle a threefold increase in production in two years. These challenges are now surfacing, and some of them include:

• The rail engineering market is limited and the abilities have been liberalised and reduced substantially in the past 10 years
• The rail constructor market has been liberalised. Banedanmark’s own in-house construction company is still the biggest player in the market
• Prices are very sensible to the activity in neighbouring countries like Germany and Sweden
• We need to prove a 2% annual efficiency gain
• In 2014 the infrastructure backlog of 2006 must be removed
• The operational budget was not increased proportionally to the investment budget

In other words, the great challenge is to increase efficiency with more or less the same workforce while costs are rising.
And then there is signalling…

This article’s main objective has been to tell you about how we have been working to rebuild confidence in railway traffic and also in Rail Net Denmark as a company.

One of the next major achievements will have to do with another remaining problem on the Danish railway – the signalling and interlocking systems.

In 2006, Danish politicians made a principal decision that the diverse signalling and interlocking systems on the Danish rail net should be replaced by one system compliant with the European ERTMS standard.

This decision was principal, because a more firm ground is needed before a final decision on an investment of several billion Euro can be taken. Repeating the framework from the track project Rail Net Denmark is to provide this fundament. This is being conducted within a project programme with the task of providing a thorough assessment of the feasibility and risks of a new system.

Problems with current signalling set up

A rise in the number of untraceable signal failure is the most acute threat to punctuality. In current rail traffic, half of all infrastructure related delays on the mainlines are due to signalling.

The ageing systems makes maintenance costs increasingly higher, which also goes for any structural change in system where providing the human resources which understand the old systems is already now a real difficulty.

Danish ATC reaches its end of life in 2020. No matter which decision is made, major investments have to be made before this time.

Rail Net Denmark operates six different interlocking systems, two different centralised traffic control systems and three different train control systems. As with ageing systems a mix of many different types and technologies also leads to failures and consequently to decline in punctuality.

This is mainly due to Interface problems between different technologies.

Other problems with diversity of type the unique Danish signalling & operational rules is making cross-boarder traffic difficult and has created a Monopolistic marked situation with high entry barriers. Type also adds to the maintenance costs and cost of changes in functionality.

The signalling solution

A full renewal of the signalling systems seems the right solution. But it also presents a whole new set of challenges, not least is how to execute such a project. That’s why the Signalling Programme was initiated with the mandate that the decided technical solution should be compatible to the European ERTMS standards, if not for any other reasons then because Danish government has given guarantees to this effect.