What is resilient rail?

Railways are the nervous system of modern cities, keeping them vibrant and connected to the world at large. They ensure the free movement and exchange that underpins economic prosperity and the well-being of people and communities. Surging demand for transportation, rapid technological advancement, environmental upheavals, geopolitical and economic uncertainty—cities can only thrive in the face of these pressures if their railway systems are something they can depend on.

We at Alstom define resilience as the ability of a rail system to resist, absorb, adapt to and recover from adverse events or stresses while maintaining safety and performance. The first line of defence is robustness. We use tough, high-quality components and materials, and our high-performance trains and infrastructure are designed for long lifecycles. We also work to anticipate all possible disruptions, including digital, that railway operators will face both short and long-term, and we design products and services that can absorb these pressures with as little disruption as possible. This is railway resilience: the capacity to absorb stress and recover quickly from adverse events.

Resilience is a central feature of performance. Railways must be a dependable investment for our customers, their passengers and for society. They must remain safe, efficient and comfortable—regardless of the increasingly complex challenges the world throws at them. And on those occasions where they are impacted, they must be able to bounce back rapidly.

Climate change: weathering the storm

Extreme weather is the new norm. Scorching heatwaves, heavy snow, floods or sandstorms—railway systems must be engineered to endure increasingly harsh conditions. Beyond complying with the widely accepted standards for trains to operate between -25°C and + 45°C, they can be winterised to withstand temperatures as low as -40°C (and even -50°C for locomotives), as occur in Canada and Nordic countries. When things really warm up in Riyadh, cooling systems aboard Alstom’s metro are designed to operate even as external temperatures soar to +58°C and power supply is cut off.

There’s more to railways than just trains. Infrastructure, notably ground-based electrical equipment, must remain safe and operational during floods, heatwaves and the extreme accumulation of dust. Our technologies have allowed Dubai’s tramway to operate in desert conditions for the past ten years.

Climate resilience goes even further: traffic can be rerouted onto other lines in the case of outage, backup control centres can take over when the primary one fails and signalling systems can directly interface with local weather stations to automatically adjust speed.

Demand for transportation: saturated networks, rain or shine

It’s not just temperatures that are rising. The number of people living in urban areas around the world is expected to rise from 56% to 68% of a total population of 9.7 billion by 2050. So we’ll need capacity, modularity and flexibility, as well as the ability to evolve—railways must be agile. They must be able to ingest ever-increasing volumes and retain their value at the same time.

The risks accumulate when constantly running a system close to saturation point: excessive wear from overloading, disrupted maintenance cycles, reduced resistance to extreme weather events to name but a few. We lean into this challenge by focusing not only on the robustness of solutions, but also on the adaptability of trains in the face of changing needs. More and more, we leverage digital technologies for things like automatic driving, flow management, headway improvement and dwell-time reduction, as well as for smart maintenance strategies.

Predictive and prognostic maintenance technologies use sensors and advanced data analytics to predict wear and tear throughout the lifetime of equipment. This can prevent failures altogether by anticipating anomalies and devising strategic maintenance schedules. The end result? Continuously available service. Resilient service.

Energy and cost: how low we can go

Electric rail is by far the cleanest and most energy-efficient transport mode (emissions from rail are at least six times lower than cars and five times lower than planes per transported passenger kilometre), but it still uses power. Business models of rail operators around the world depend on their systems using power efficiently, even as the price of electricity climbs and demand fluctuates month to month, day to day, or even hour to hour. Meanwhile, the world is pivoting towards low-carbon economies and demand for sustainable energy is ballooning.

Priority #1: use as little electricity as possible at all times!

Priority #2: learn to recognise patterns and anticipate network demand.

We take a global approach—on-board energy storage technologies, smart power management systems, advanced materials and aerodynamics, data-based technologies, to name a few—to squeeze as much performance as possible out of available energy and push the TCO (total cost of ownership) downwards for customers, all while insulating our solutions against power price and demand fluctuations. And let’s not forget smart modernisation techniques that allow older vehicles to roll into the future with an energy usage comparable to new vehicles, lowering the overall energy consumption of the system. The less you need to consume, the tougher you are. The tougher you are, the further you can go.

Cybersecurity and connectivity: a safe space

Railways are critical infrastructure. As they become more automated and efficient, they become inextricably tethered to the computational and data-based technologies that control them. It is just as important to protect railways digitally as it is physically.

We address the entire cybersecurity lifecycle, from building a new line, to launching a new type of train, to creating infrastructure and signalling, to upgrading and operating a transportation system. The cybersecurity architecture framework is constructed around what needs to be protected, the likely impact of the risks and where they come from—internally, from somewhere in the supply chain, or from entirely external threats.

Resilience should not be considered an ancillary expense or a performance inhibitor. It extends beyond technical, operational and cost considerations. It is the bedrock upon which Alstom designs, manufactures and operates the railway systems on which our cities depend.

By embedding resilience within the performance profile, we aim not only to addresses today's challenges, but actively shape a resilient, reliable future for shared mobility—and thus for society as a whole.

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