Japanese company Hitachi on August 30, 2012 said that Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd has received order for a prototype of a traffic management system from Network Rail Infrastructure Limited in England, Scotland and Wales. The prototypes will be tested and evaluated by Network Rail ordered from Hitachi and two other companies.
And based on the outcome it will make a decision regarding the future rollout of traffic management across the entire rail network in Great Britain. At present the Network Rail owns and manages a railway infrastructure which includes railway stations and tracks throughout Britain.
Network Rail also controls the railway operations from more than 800 signalling locations. The company is also planning to implement centralized management to 14 operating centres including new centres scheduled to be built in the near future.
It will also introduce the new traffic management system as a part of efforts to increase the efficiency and to reduce the costs. The new traffic management system is expected to be rolled out from 2014 and will eventually cover all parts of Britain’s rail network. The Network Rail has placed the orders for the prototypes systems with three companies which includes Hitachi. In Japan such systems have been used on high density commuter networks as well as Shinkansen high speed lines.
