SIEMENS

Eight platforms, 470 cameras, dozens of escalators, and 200,000 passengers a day – King’s Cross St. Pancras in London is one of the most frequented subway stations in all of Europe. Emlyn Ragbirsingh’s job at the station’s control center is to ensure that everything runs smoothly. Thanks to a Siemens IT system, just a few mouse clicks is all it takes for Ragbirsingh to close in on any corner of the station, examine floor plans or call up images from surveillance cameras. It might look like a computer game, but in fact it’s reality. For example, a crew member has just reported by wireless that a young woman has tripped and fallen. Ragbirsingh immediately sends out one of his colleagues to help the young lady. A short time later, one of the escalators breaks down and service technicians immediately move into action. “I never know what to expect when I arrive at work in the morning,” Ragbirsingh says. “Sometimes there’s almost nothing going on during the first seven hours of my shift, but then an entire Underground line will suddenly shut down during the last 15 minutes.”

The Tube, as Londoners call their subway, is already stretched to the limit these days, even without breakdowns. It carried more than 1.2 billion passengers in 2012. No one could have imagined such a scenario in 1863, when the world’s first subway line went into operation in London using steam locomotives. The network was significantly expanded in the following decades, and is now the second-longest in the world after Shanghai’s. And of course it has been modernized, step by step. The first electric trains went into service in the late 19th century. In 1891, for example, the City and South London Railway ordered two electric locomotives from Siemens Brothers for use on the route between King William Street and Stockwell.

Siemens chassis were built into modern vehicles a few years ago. Yet despite all the modernizations, the Tube remains a Victorian architectural achievement – a labyrinth with narrow corridors and tight curves. In fact, the signal system installed at the Edgware Road station in 1926 is still being used today. One of the problems faced by the Tube is that many different surveillance and control systems were installed over a period of decades and they now need to be integrated. The London Underground therefore commissioned Siemens to integrate the surveillance and control systems of the entire Victoria Line into a single control center. The IT solution installed at King’s Cross St. Pancras station is now making Ragbirsingh’s day easier. The solution incorporates 13 different surveillance and control systems into one simple interface. “Lighting, pumps, display boards, fire alarms, passenger help points – everything that is needed for the safe and secure operation of the station can now be called up more quickly by the teams,” says Howard Collins, Chief Operating Officer of the London Underground, who is responsible for some 12,000 employees. Collins is at King’s Cross this morning to watch the station’s staff work. “I’ve done just about every job there is in the Tube,” he says proudly. Among other things, he has worked at ticket gates, made announcements on platforms, and operated trains.

More Tunnels. Although complaining about the Tube is a London obsession, service has in fact become more efficient over the last few decades. And Collins’ team is trying to make it more reliable as well. “I started working here in 1977,” he recalls. “Back then, we still had trains from before World War II, and it was not uncommon for one out of every three trains on the key Northern Line to be canceled.” At that time, the Tube was moving “only” around 500 million people per year. Disaster then struck in 1987, when an old wooden escalator caught fire at King’s Cross station, leading to 31 deaths. “I was a junior manager on the District Line and I wasn’t working that day, but it was a big wake-up call for everyone,” Collins recalls. “It was clear that we needed to invest more in the Tube and equip it with more reliable technology.” The Tube has come a long way since then. These days, platforms are being expanded and new tunnels are being built. For instance, the 21-kilometer, 15-billion-pound Crossrail Tunnel will allow commuter trains to pass under the entire city. The new link is scheduled to enter service in 2018. Its smooth functioning will be ensured by signaling and control systems from Siemens.

The Crossrail Tunnel will increase London’s rail transport capacity by around ten percent when it opens. In the meantime, Collins is working on making a large number of improvements to daily operations in order to move more passengers along existing lines. The improvements are expected to expand the Tube’s capacity by 30 percent. “We need to make more efficient use of the infrastructure we already have,” he says. “We can do this by beefing up existing lines – for example, through the addition of state-of-the-art signaling systems and by speeding up the trains.”

More than 3,000 old cars on the deep tube lines – especially those running in tubular tunnels – are to be replaced by 2023, with a first call for tenders to be made in 2014. Friedrich Timmer and his team at Siemens are currently working on a concept for the London Underground trains of the future. “A deep tube car has to be not only robust but also light,” he says. “Otherwise the trains will consume too much energy and their waste heat will make the tunnels and stations even hotter than they already are.” The Tube is already London’s biggest single electricity consumer, accounting for 2.8 percent of total demand. “Drive systems, bogies, acceleration properties – everything has to be precisely optimized in line with the London Tube network,” says Timmer. His goal is to raise Tube vehicle energy efficiency by around 20 percent and increase passenger capacity by over ten percent.

After his visit to King’s Cross, Collins takes the Victoria Line back to his office in Westminster. Collins was recently awarded the Order of the British Empire by the Queen, and the station personnel, who all know him, offer their congratulations. Although he’s happy about the award, he points out, “I’m one of them – and I feel best when I’m somewhere in the Tube.” That’s why he goes to one of the Tube’s platforms at least once a year to grab a microphone and make announcements. The famous Scottish economist Adam Smith was probably right when he said that a railroad is five percent iron and 95 percent men.