Mark Lowten
Thales GTS UK
Mark leads the Human Factors team within Thales Ground Transport System. He is also the Human Factors Design Authority for Thales GTS Global Business Unit meaning that he is responsible for deployment of and integration of Human Factors with Projects, Products bids and services. He is a graduate of Loughborough University and been working in the world of Human Factors since 2000.
Paul Salkeld
London Underground
Paul is a Human Factors Engineer at London Underground. As a graduate of Systems Engineering at Loughborough University, Paul found his route to into Human Factors firstly via placements at BaeSystems and then at Tubelines before joining London Underground
Signaller workload is a key input to control room and equipment design, but as the level of automation in control systems increases it can be difficult to predict. It can also be expensive and time consuming to completely start from scratch every time you start a new project. How can we use benchmarking to leverage what we have learnt from previous projects?
Railways, their control rooms and in particular their control systems are making use of increasing levels of automation to support signaller’s in their role. Increased automation of traditional signaller tasks, and concepts such as flexible areas of control, can make predicting the optimum number of signallers difficult.
This paper describes the approach taken to predict the number of signallers for two new signalling projects; the London Underground 4 Lines Modernisation project upgrading the Sub-Surface Railway, and the new 4 line metro system in Doha Qatar;
- The London Underground Sub-Surface Railway is made up of the Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines. Together they carry 1 million passengers per day, and cover 40% of LU network. The Sub-Surface Railway is currently controlled separately as the District Line and Metropolitan Line, and signalled from 11 separate facilities distributed across the network. The 4 Lines Modernisation project is upgrading the Sub-Surface Railway to improve capacity by providing a new Thales CBTC Seltrac signalling system, based on that used for the previous Northern Line upgrade project, from a single new Service Control Centre in Hammersmith.
- Qatar Rail are building a 4 line metro in Doha all controlled from a single Control Centre. The final configuration of the system will cover approximately 235kms of track and carry 60 million people a year. This system will be highly automated with unmanned trains but controlled by a new workforce without any experience of train operations. The railway will contain areas of deep tube, cut and cover, on sand and in some places raised whilst having to operate at well over 50 degrees Celsius.
While the two projects are in many respects similar, different approaches have been taken to predict signaller workload.
The approach for the London system leverages the experience gained from the Northern Line Upgrade, by identifying specific features of the network that contribute to signaller workload, and matching this to the Sub Surface Railway.
For the Doha system a dual approach was taken; firstly a comparison of the proposed system with other Seltrac deployments, and secondly a time-on-task model for agreed scenarios, working with subject matter experts to scale the staffing arrangements accordingly.
This paper will describe the methods used, highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, and suggest an improved model going forward.
Please publish this paper in the electronic book of conference proceedings.
Please consider this paper for inclusion in a special edition of Applied Ergonomics.
Systems ergonomics , Ergonomics design in control facilities, train cabs and rolling stock , Signaller performance, workload, situation awareness
