Page 42 - Vía Libre Special - 25 Years of Spanish High Speed Rail

SPECIAL

years of Spanish high speed rail

unique view of resources. Our Copérnico system has
been recognized as a world class, state-of-the-art
system and it has been already been acquired for use
in the Mecca - Medina (Saudi Arabia) high speed rail
services.

Introduction of new HSR
services

A very important part of the operation of
high speed rail services is their launch. The seamless
transfer from the provision of conventional rail
La Sagra maintenance centre (Toledo).
services to high speed rail services is a complex
technical, operational and commercial task. Renfe,
version was implemented in 2006 and that takes with the 2nd largest HSR network in the world,
advantage of all the data captured from the different has been using its experience for streamlining
activity centres. It is a state-of-the-art information and improving all the processes needed for the
and operations management system which unifies the commissioning of the new infrastructure. For
different operation systems into a single automated example, in 2010, for the introduction of the new HSR
control of train operations, enabling 360° knowledge services from Madrid to Valencia, Renfe developed a
and control of train operations. This includes the work plan identifying key milestones and deadlines
position of all trains, their features, maintenance which had to be achieved so as not to compromise
history, crew, passengers on board, etc. the date for the start of commercial services. This
By the end of 2013 a new upgraded version of planning, monitored at all times by our Circulation
Copérnico was fully deployed for all train services Safety Department, was based on 3 key factors, each
(High Speed, Conventional Long Distance, and affecting different stakeholders:
Regional and Suburban services). To achieve this 1) The training and transfer of drivers, in close
we established a project team jointly led by the collaboration with human resources and the
Operations Control Centre and the IT department. unions
They reviewed the capabilities of the existing systems 2) The homologation of rolling stock, involving
which had been deployed in the different areas: manufacturers and maintenance entities
Suburban, Regional and Long Distance Services 3) Track tests and commercial tests, with Adif,
as well as the experience from other transport our infrastructure manager.
operators. As this was a project based on data, In addition, we had to ensure that our current
they established a project committee in charge of and potential customers were perfectly informed and
cooperating with the external information providers ready for the new service. In order to promote and
(mainly Adif, the infrastructure manager). The HR raise awareness of the new commercial services we
department was also involved in swiftly identifying carried out an aggressive communication plan on
a major risk: the lack of support of the new system TV for nine weeks, achieving a total of 3,442 GRPs
by the staff. They therefore established specific (Gross Rating Points) and reaching 93.5% of our
technical training and change management to ease target audience (35 million people). The number of
their involvement in this new approach. impacts of the campaign was estimated to be over
The implementation of these technological 1,000 million.
developments has been a complete success. We have The start-up of HS operations in the Madrid-
increased the efficiency of passenger operations Valencia corridor was a complete success, meeting all
by reducing the number of control centres from 21 expectations in a timely manner. We trained drivers
to 18 and reducing staff by 13% (through attrition and on-board staff, we homologated the trains for
or assignment to other areas of the company), the new infrastructure, and we informed the various
while the number of operations increased by 13.6%. stakeholders of the characteristics of the new
The reduction of time in communications and services. In the first year of HS service, the Madrid-
management with the Train Maintenance Area Valencia line carried over 1.8 million passengers, an
was considerable once we moved from telephone increase of over 200% compared to the number
communications and manual and decentralized of passengers carried by the previous service, with
records to having immediate information online Perceived Quality Index (PQI) based on surveys of
on fleet availability, with centralized records and a 7.92 out of 10. Market share vs air travel changed

42 Vía Libre • Special 25th Anniversary of the AVE Edition