On September 8, Zhengzhou-Xuchang City Railway equipped with CASCO’s signaling system, was formally put on trial operation, which launched the “countdown” for the formal operation of the first fully automatic operation metro line in Henan and Central China. It was another step closer to the goal of passenger-carrying trial operation.

First train of the trial run

Zhengzhou-Xuchang City Railway consists of Zhengzhou section and Xuchang section. The line starts from North Chang’an Road Station in Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone in the north and ends at Xuchangdong Railway Station in Xuchang City in the south. It is 67.13km long in total, with 27 stations and the design speed of 120km/h. The line will be operated with “high density and short marshaling”, like buses, and be connected into the urban rail transit network of Zhengzhou, making the commuting time between Xuchang and Zhengzhou reduced to about 1h.

Driverless line with the Highest Grade of Automation

Zhengzhou-Xuchang City Railway is the first driverless intercity railway in China and the first driverless rail line in Henan Province. CASCO has provided the fully automatic operation signaling system solution and led the coordination of relevant works concerning the fully automatic operation.

Designed according to the highest grade of automation (GoA4), with the support of CASCO’s fully automatic signaling system, the train is able to wake up, carry out overall self-inspection, depart, precisely pull up, turnback, return to garage, and get into dormant state automatically without manual intervention.

Besides, this system of CASCO has obtained the highest international safety level certificate, SIL4, and is highly safe and reliable. On the one hand, the design of multiple devices and redundant interfaces eliminates the impact of the failure of a single device on the overall operation; on the other hand, in case of some faults and emergencies, the system can rapidly recover automatically or remotely, which ensures operation management and emergency disposal and keeps the passengers safe and sound.

Debugging and test of the signaling system

Intelligent Applications Improves the Operation

Based on the technical solution provided by CASCO, a number of advanced intelligent applications have also been activated for Zhengzhou-Xuchang City Railway, which will facilitate the operation upgrading of metros in Zhengzhou. For example, in case of an outburst of passenger flow, intelligent scheduling can adjust and put in more trains in real time; intelligent depot can easily cope with the frequent dispatching of trains; and intelligent O&M can automatically locate the failures or hidden dangers of devices, thus reducing failure rate and maintenance cost.

It’s noteworthy that the above-mentioned functions cannot be realized without the technical support of Henan High Dependable Intelligent Urban Rail Engineering Research Center jointly established by Zhengzhou Metro and CASCO. The Center serves as the R&D base of the project and also a checkpoint before the formal operation of the system. The system has been properly tested in simulated scenes provided with real trackside and vehicle-mounted devices through the localized FIVP system test platform to ensure its safety and reliability.

The interior of Henan High Dependable Intelligent Urban Rail Engineering Research Center

Upon the launch of the trial run, Zhengzhou-Xuchang City Railway will carry out a rehearsal of its normal operation as from today. From now on, CASCO will make the best of this rehearsal to verify all functions related to the fully automatic operation, check all performance indexes of relevant facilities and devices of the system, and get ready for the subsequent passenger-carrying trial run, thus propelling the process of “Zhengzhou-Xuchang integration” and helping build a one-hour traffic circle centered on Zhengzhou.