| There's very little information in either this post or elsewhere on the internets. This discussion on a UK rail forum provides some food for thought [1] The Elizabeth line is pioneering in terms of aiming for automated train operation (ATO) over infrastructure that's shared to some extent with trains driven by humans. Going beyond driving per se, both types of trains make use of highly complex automation for functions like switch management, traffic separation for safety and station door opening. Reading through the lines, two systemic difficulties this brings about are: (A) A conceptually new ATO system (Siemens Trainguard MT); a further plot twist is that Siemens acquired the system mid-development from Invensys. (B) Ad-hoc integration of this system with a large number of external systems provided by several vendors; it should be of note that rail systems are not designed for to interoperability with other vendors, and integration is often achieved post-development bringing about otherwise avoidable complexity. Given that during the incident each individual domain of the system (A) has been reset and validated multiple times, my suspicion falls on the undocumented and uncharted complexity underlying (B). [1] https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/elizabeth-line-total-lo... |