1. IRSC 2005 Cape Town - South Africa 9 – 14 october 2005
Operating in dense environment
J-P BALENSI
SNCF – Infrastructure Division

2. Main particularities of operating in dense environment
Very short time spacing between trains
Increasing frequency of trains’ long stops out of platforms
Observation of a new passengers behaviour: getting out of the trains in the tracks leading to a major risk of crash between passengers and passing trains
High disturbance in operating with heavy repercussion on train regularity
As a result, the railway undertakings must make an operating choice in the dense areas in case of incident: a train is safe when stopping or a train is safe when running?

3. Example: incident in Villeneuve Triage (south-east suburb of Paris) on 20/09/2003
Train stopped by emergency braking partly out of platform
Passing train
Gathering passengers between tracks 1bis and 2bis
- In train , a driver’s handling is releasing the doors
An announcement in the train by the driver for further evacuation is interpreted
by passengers as an authorisation to get out of the train immediately
Passengers are walking in the track on the platform side and on the track 2bis side as
the train is passing by
- No dead or injuried people but big media consequences

4. French Railways operating choice
After Villeneuve Triage incident, SNCF evaluated the level of risk in applying the existing safety regulations: in dense areas passenger safety is better ensured in such a situation if the driver has the possibility to run with low speed to reach the first platform.
As a result:
safety regulation must be modified
technical modifications must be made on rolling stock
Make a comparison with metro regulation in the same case.

5. Safety regulation modification
In case of passenger train stops in open line because of persistent radio emergency signal emission, the driver of a suburb train is allowed to keep going on with a maximum speed of 30km/h until he can stop along a platform.
This modification is in force in Ile de France region since 01/07/2004 and will be extended to other dense areas from 01/12/2005.

6. Rolling stock technical modification
The doors cannot be open by the passengers if the train is running (even slowly) or stopping in open line;
The driver can release the doors under these conditions to avoid passenger confinement risk within a 30 seconds temporization.
The emergency signal reset can be done by the driver from the cab.

7. First results of new measures implementation
Since 2004 we can observe an annual number of passengers falling from a train decreasing from 40 to 13.
Next december, in case of a persistent radio emergency signal emission on dense areas, all the trains will be allowed to restart at low speed until the first plateform (passenger trains) or further (other trains).

8. Further evolutions
At the same time, SNCF is studying with a consultant what could be the consequences of trains going on running after a detection of « opening door » instead of stopping in emergency.
The situation appears very complex and requires time to lead to the choice of the best solution.

9. Thank you for attention !