Digital InnoTrans: The VDB Digital Dialog Forum – Dr Jörg Nikutta

“A year ago all of us – not least thanks to the #FridaysForFuture movement – we were all talking about carbon emissions and how to reduce them. All of this has fallen out of view a little bit because of the pandemic but the subject hasn’t gone away. It’s still there. And that means we all need environmentally friendly mobility and the railways can and will make a major contribution to this. To achieve that we need a highperforming railway – rail 4.0 – and the VDB President Andre Rodenbeck already mentioned a very important step and that’s transitioning train control in Germany to ETCS. The German government has made a unique quantity of money available for this, and made it available quickly so that we can have a digital rail network in Germany. A thriving railway will allow us to increase capacity and it will create many pre-conditions too, such as for automatic train operations – ATO. What has been established in the metro sector for 30 years is not yet something that is established for mainline operations. And please don’t make the first thing you think of in connection to driverless trains saving personnel costs. The goal is a completely different one. The goal is the flexible deployment of trains when customers need them. Within the framework of the European Shift2Rail initiative, we at Alstom, together with the operator enno, are working over the next three years on converting two trains in Lower Saxony so that they will be capable of driverless operation. This is one contribution that digitalisation can deliver for more comfortable rail travel and more comfort, more mobility means reduced emissions.

Under 70% of railway lines in Germany are electrified. Is that a lot or not? Opinions differ, but what’s clear is that we need concepts for environmentally friendly mobility on nonelectrified routes too. Don’t get me wrong – even a diesel train on those tracks is better than 100 people driving their private cars. But there are currently two technologies that are positioning themselves as options for these lines: battery trains, which are being developed and sold in Germany. At Alstom we’re building battery trains at our site in Salzgitter too.

But we also have hydrogen. The subject of hydrogen is new, but two years ago our pre-series Coradia iLint started operating in Bremervörde in regular passenger service. Anyone was able to buy a ticket, get on board, and travel on them. For two weeks now one of these two trains is running in Austria, south of Vienna, to demonstrate that hydrogen technology is also capable of dealing with more mountainous terrain. It demonstrates that this isn’t a technology that will only be deployed in a few years’ time. The technology is here now. Environmentally friendly mobility on our railway is already available and will be expanded so that nobody will be dependent on private cars anymore, however they are powered.”