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Regulation and ARS on the modern railway Yesterday at 00:48 #160468 | |
postal
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There is a long and very interesting discussion about regulation and the effects of ARS on today's railway with a lot of comment from signallers and drivers on the WNXX forum at https://www.wnxxforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=40052&start=75.
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Regulation and ARS on the modern railway Yesterday at 05:45 #160469 | |
drew
![]() 81 posts |
That does require a log in. As a downstream recipient of ARS, I’m against it in most cases. It’s like most forms of automation, it lowers workload in situations when it was already low, and makes things even more difficult when workload is high. It’s a productivity tool for the boss, not an aide for the worker. Deceases the situational awareness of the signaller and disincentivizes creativity and problem solving. We had an interesting form of industrial action here recently, as a part of our enterprise agreement bargaining malarkey. The signallers had an action to not intervene with the ARS unless there was an imminent safety issue. They let it do its thing. Chaos usually ensued. Log in to reply The following users said thank you: sunocske, TUT |
Regulation and ARS on the modern railway Yesterday at 11:26 #160472 | |
TUT
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Have you noticed how the people who come up with these systems name them after diseases? It's almost as if somewhere, deep down, they know what they're doing. You know one of them is literally called SARS? And then ARS itself, of course, also stands for Acute Radiation Syndrome. Now ARS is a terrible thing. It eats away at you physically and mentally, utterly ravaging body and soul, robbing you of your strength, your vitality and your basic human dignity in life. And the disease is very similar, but at least with the disease you'll probably die after a month or so and then you won't have to worry about it anymore, will you? Personally I think generations of railway workers have sold themselves out. There should have been an ironclad agreement right from the very first that no signaller would ever allow a train to proceed on which they knew or suspected ATO was in use and no driver would ever start their train if they knew or suspected ARS was in use. Instead they invited the vampires in. The last RMT pay deal in the UK included unconditional agreement to the use of traffic management. The RMT didn't even highlight this as a 'con' of the agreement in their brief to their members. Well it's too late to do anything about it now, once you've let the vampires in it's all over. Log in to reply |
Regulation and ARS on the modern railway Yesterday at 14:34 #160477 | |
Jan
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Even without ARS you still could have ended up in the same situation where delay attribution causes perverse incentives in that shifting the blame for delays away from you becomes more important than minimising overall delays.
Two million people attempt to use Birmingham's magnificent rail network every year, with just over a million of them managing to get further than Smethwick. Log in to reply |
Regulation and ARS on the modern railway Today at 08:15 #160493 | |
Giantray
![]() 348 posts |
I worked with Hitachi's SARS, Signaller's Assistant Route Setting. One thing management and many Signallers forget. ARS in what ever form is an aid to the Signaller, not fully automatic working. The Signaller still has to monitor what is going on and step in, adjust or turn off ARS as is appropriate. Unfortunately in some areas, Managers with little signalling experience insist on ARS being used all the time. The area I worked in was different. Signallers had a lot of involvement in the build of regulation decisions. With SARS it is also easy to change regulation in the system with the aid of the Signaller interface or by a SARS "super user"(nominated Signallers/Shift Managers) who could make permanent alterations using a lot of "if" and "then" statements, fine tuning the system. Unfortunately, because of the lack of team work between some Signallers and Management,and project teams and their Managers, ARS for some areas is developed by those not in the know, and you get what is given. The area I worked in dealt with 2200 trains a day and most of the time because of the development of the SARS, fine tuning, Signaller interaction, it was a great aid. During failures it allowed the switching off of sub Areas, keeping areas moving whilst dealing with a problem area. There was even inbuilt diversion preset functions that the Signaller could switch on that was designed to divert certain trains over certain routes/lines. These were programmed in by the "super user". Sadly, not all projects involving signalling involve those that are the end user, the Signaller. But also there are a lot of Signallers who still wish they were pulling levers in isolated signal boxes unwilling to accept modernization. It is a new issue, Signaller/Signalmen of old when something new came in would moan and whine, it will never work, Power Boxes replacing Lever boxes, WestCad replacing Power boxes. Unfortunately the railway is modernizing, as it has been since it was invented and everyone needs to work together to get the end results they expect in stead of being on personal agendas or career progression.
Professionalism mean nothing around a bunch of Amateur wannabees! Log in to reply |