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The Up-To-Date Design of the Public Transportation System: The Fully-AutomatedSystem Known as T.A.U. (Transport Automatisé Urbain)

1987; Elsevier BV; Volume: 20; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s1474-6670(17)55911-x

2589-3653

L. Avet,

Transportation Planning and Optimization

Particularly well adapted to cities of 100,000 to 1,000,000 inhabitants, the TAU is a public transportation system, capable of the performances, the comfort and the service quality of a metro, with high savings in investment and operating costs. The TAU system, an integrated public transportation system presents the following highlights: - A total automatization of the transport network: unmanned vehicle driving and remote control of the complete network from the dispatching: basic criteria for the operating costs reduction, - An easy integration within the urban network thanks to specific construction methods for the tunnels and the stations, to a new design of articulated bogie with four independent wheels and to small-profile vehicles: basic criteria for the construction works costs reduction. - The whole automatization enables to reduce notably the operating costs against those of existing transportation systems, for which the expenses for the operating personnel are high. The flexibility of adaptation to the transportation demand enables to manage optimally the park of vehicles, having also in mind the economy of energy. The infrastructure costs, which represent nearly 3/4 of the investment costs of the existing transportation systems, have been minimized thanks to a specific design of the vehicles enabling to reduce largely the gauge of the civil engineer works and to the design of new methods of civil works using prefabricated units for the tunnel realization. The TAU system permanently realizes the adaptation of the transport capacity to the demand variable between off-peak hours and rush hours, by programmed control of the headways and the train compositions. During rush hours, 2 or 3 coupled traction units will circulate with headways of 60 to 90 seconds, while during off-peak hours a single-traction unit circulating every 3 minutes will enable to keep acceptable waiting times. Within the TAU system, the functions, usually performed by the operating personnel, which highly burden the operating costs, are realized by automatisms: drivings of vehicles, serving of stations, traffic management, selection of time tables and headways, yard management, selection of routes, manoeuvres in terminals, injection on line and returning in depot. Regularized operation with short headways and keeping of high-passage frequencies during off-peak hours are performed thanks to the modularity of the rolling stock and to the full automatization of the system operation under the control of a disptaching realizing the network management (controls, protections, signalizations, monitoring). Complete system testing and endurance tests of the sybsystems have been performed at the TAU Tests Centre located in JUMET near CHARLEROI.