Experience from the Application of European Railway Standards on APMs

摘要

European CENELEC Railway Standards or their drafts: EN 50126 ('RAMS Standard'), EN 50128 and EN 50129 to date have reached a rather mature state and have been applied on several projects. The first applications of these standards in the field of safety of APMs are very interesting, because a new APM installation usually covers development/modifications of a bigger part of the system than for conventional rail applications. Examples are the ATC, additional electronic passenger protection and security systems, and special protection systems in stations like obstacle detection systems at platforms. This develops a wider spectrum of experience compared to an application on conventional railways where very often the standards are only applied to one new component of an existing sub-system, such as interlocking. In the short introduction it is shown that the standards require, besides other specific details, safety cases to be established for all safety related electric/electronic equipment and the establishment of a safety management organization with well defined levels of independence between the designer, verifier, validator and assessor throughout the course of a rail project. The effectiveness of the measures to be applied is dependent on the determined safety integrity level (SIL) of the respective function/equipment. Using practical examples, this paper describes the experience, both benefits and drawbacks, of the application of the CENELEC Railway Standards in different phases of the lifecycle of APMs from the Safety Assessor's view. The examples are mainly derived from a big APM project where the CENELEC standards have been applied: the new Copenhagen Metro. This APM system crossing the city center of Copenhagen underground will start revenue service in the fall of 2002. Meanwhile test trains without passengers are already running on the aboveground track section south of the City of Copenhagen. This APM system, where the application of the CENELEC Railway Standards is contractually required for design, construction and operation, gives a wide range of experience with the application of these standards.