Railway performance
Safety and performance
Safety is the top priority for AGIFI members. Maintenance teams work 24/7 to guarantee the safety of the railway infrastructure.
Almost 1,000 employees work every day to improve the safety, reliability, and consistency of the networks. Innovation also plays an important role, with smart infrastructure monitoring systems and new approaches to predictive maintenance that improve passenger safety and operational performance.
The companies that maintain these lines have developed continuous monitoring tools that are specific to the line they oversee and do not exist on the rest of the network. Each maintenance company has its own supervision centre.
Each maintenance company has its own supervision centre. OPERE, which maintains the BPL HSL, uses the “Centre Opérationnel BPL” (COBPL) while MESEA set up “Hypervision MESEA” for the SEA Tours-Bordeaux HSL. These centres serve as veritable control towers for the lines. They monitor all the systems required to operate the high-speed trains, which does not occur on the rest of the network.
As part of their agreements, AGIFI members are committed to offering particularly high levels of performance. To do so, they have developed specific expertise and tools.
In particular, they are committed to monitoring their infrastructure to provide effective corrective maintenance and expand the use of predictive maintenance, which allows them to intervene as soon as a problem is detected to significantly reduce the impact on traffic.
97.5 %
of commercial trains circulate on the CNM (Nîmes-Montpellier bypass) without losing any time due to Oc’Via Maintenance, which maintains the line.
99%
availability on critical sites for SYNERAIL, which is responsible for the Global System for Mobile Communications – Railways (GSM-R), meaning less than 8 hours of downtime per site per year.
99.5%
of commercial trains circulate on the BPL (Bretagne-Pays de Loire) HSL, with no time lost due to OPERE, which maintains the line.
99,8%
of commercial trains circulate on the SEA Tours-Bordeaux HSL with no time lost due to MESEA, which maintains the line.
Predictive maintenance to boost performance
AGIFI members have developed a strategy based in large part on predictive maintenance to guarantee the operational performance of their infrastructure and the long-term economic efficiency of the projects.
To that end, maintenance is conducted as early as possible and future problems are anticipated.
Intelo
INTELO is a remotely-operated vehicle with a small footprint that is only 70 cm-wide. It has a 15 m-long articulated arm with a gyro-stabilised camera system that allows inspections of engineering structures to be carried out via digital imaging in broad daylight, without interrupting high-speed train traffic. It was designed by MESEA, which maintains the Tours-Bordeaux HSL.
WIN inspection vehicle
Oc’Via Maintenance and Mermec designed WIN, a track inspection vehicle that goes up to 80 km/h and measures parameters and characteristics of the line, such as the geometry of tracks and overhead lines and the condition of components such as sleepers or rails.
Development and use of digital applications:
All AGIFI members are developing or use digital applications in their projects. For example, OPERE use a broad range of digital tools for their maintenance operations. Pegasus 2000, a high-precision mobile mapping system, provides detailed indications on the quality of ballast profiles so ballasting is done only when necessary, reducing the carbon footprint. MESEA has also developed the TIME (Ticket Incident MESEA) app to optimally manage all incidents on the SEA HSL and provide very precise technical data. The app also provides real-time information about the line, a major advantage in crisis management.
Innovation to improve maintenance
Rail-road vehicles
OPERE and MESEA use these innovative modular vehicles on both railways and roads to maintain the tracks and overhead lines. They replace draisines and can get on and off the rails near the worksite, thereby limiting congestion on the line.
Reconnaissance draisines
AGIFI members’ innovations go beyond technological features. They sometimes lead to changes in the railway industry’s methods and habits. For example, the optimisation of daily safety checks on the SEA HSL: every morning, instead of using a TGV (high-speed train) to open the line and detect possible problems on the track (as with the rest of the network), MESA-designed locomotives packed with sensors check the condition of the tracks. This approach is more economical and probably just as effective.