Alstom will Install ERTMS Dignalling Dolution for Danish Railway Network

Alstom has won a €61m contract from Danish railway infrastructure owner Banedanmark to deliver on-board equipment to railway operators in Denmark and install its Atlas European rail traffic management system (ERTMS) on 503 Banedanmark trains.

The Atlas signalling system, which comes as part of a framework agreement signed between Alstom and Banedanmark in March 2012, will help Banedanmark and other rail operators to improve operational performance, traffic flow and train frequency.

The ERTMS helps manage and control rail traffic across lines of the Trans-European Networks. One of its components, the ETCS3, is designed to allow trains to quickly cross borders.

The development and deployment of the Atlas solution on Danish railways is expected to take eight years, including a two-year design phase, during which teams from both companies will jointly work in Copenhagen, Denmark, in partnership with Alstom teams in Charleroi, Belgium.

Banedanmark programme director Morten Soendergaard said: “The contract will be a milestone for train operation in Denmark as the whole country will be operating with on-board equipment at baseline 3.0.0.0 level.”

In January 2009, the Danish Parliament announced plans to renew its entire railway signalling before 2021; the new on-board ERTMS contract is part of this €2.4bn improvement programme.

The contract, which is €140m overall, includes the installation of Atlas on up to 789 trains, mainly non-Alstom locomotives operated by 41 operators on the Fjerbane Danish network, which consists of more than 1,962km of track and 300 stations.

In January 2012, the company won a €300m contract from Banedanmark to replace the existing signalling system in the east region of Denmark with a trackside ERTMS.

The signalling application will be implemented on 12 intercity and regional lines in the Sealand and Fyn regions, which covers half the country, with more than 510km of double-tracks, 260km of single-track lines and 90 stations.