Impact of European Railway Traffic Management System on Human Performance in Railway Operations

The safety of railway system operations depends on several internal and external factors. The former include rail traffic rules, infrastructure, rolling stock reliability, organizational safety culture, and human factors. The railway systems in Europe, North America, and Australasia have seen significant technological developments for improved capacity and efficiency. Europe, for instance, is implementing the European Railway Traffic Management System (ERTMS). However, transition to a more automated traffic management system requires, among other things, changes to infrastructure, rolling stock, operational procedures, or all three. Concerning operational procedures, the literature shows that train drivers, signalers, and controllers have the greatest effect on the safety of a railway network. Therefore, the reliability and safety integrity of the railway network are largely dependent on human factors, in particular, the performance of human operators. This performance in turn is affected by a number of factors broadly known as performance-shaping factors (PSFs), with deficiencies in communication accounting for more than 90% of incidents for the conventional railway system. Therefore, this study investigated the influence of ERTMS and in particular the Global System for Mobile Communications–Railway (GSM-R) on operators' performance. The study analyzed 74 accident and incident reports of railway operations before and after GSM-R implementation from several European railway organizations. The results identified the communications-related factors that affected human performance in the conventional and upgraded railway system based on the existing railway–PSF taxonomy. Finally, the results showed the positive impact of GSM-R implementation on operators' performance.