Bologna High-Speed bypass Line Equipped with Alstom Signalling System

The new Bologna high-speed bypass Line, in Italy, equipped with Alstom signalling system, is now in service. It connects the Bologna-Florence and Bologna-Milan high-speed lines without passing through the Bologna Centrale station, ensuring improved punctuality and faster journey time.

Based on Alstom’s Atlas 200 platform, the system includes a train control system that complies with ERTMS[1] standard and a multi-station Interlocking architecture in accordance with RFI standards. These state-of-the-art railway signal technologies ensures the safe management of trains in high-speed transit through the city, representing approximately 16 km in length, 10 km of which is underground. Thanks to these works, high-speed trains traveling at 300km per hour are able to travel from Milan to Florence without traffic interference from suburban trains.

This important contract complements the activities already carried out by Alstom to implement the Computerised Central System of the Bologna Centrale railway station, i.e. the computer that since 2009 has safely managed the traffic of over 700 trains per day (with a potential to handle 1,200 trains) improving both flexibility and modularity; and to build the infrastructures of the Bologna-Florence high-speed line (78 km in length, 73 km of which in tunnels) that carry all the high-speed passenger traffic from northern Italy to Rome.

Alstom is a pioneer in use of the ERTMS signalling system. In 2005, Alstom equipped the first very-high-speed line with the ATLAS ERTMS Level 2 system. The Rome-Naples line, operated by RFI, is 216-kilometre-long and Alstom supplied the on-board ATLAS equipment for 27 ETR 500 type trains running at 300 km/h.

Thanks to Atlas, trains can receive traffic management information (authorized speed, signals/points, safety distances between trains etc.) from the track—thereby enabling it to calculate its maximum authorized speed continuously. The system allows a train to travel on railway lines from end to end without stopping, and operates on every type of train.