A few days ago I went looking for something I had written. Two years ago in the IRSE News, I published an article called “ETCS interoperability, how hard can it be?”, in which I named four root causes of why ETCS interoperability keeps failing in practice. I called the first one the Toolbox Dilemma. I wanted to check my wording before using the term again.

However, I confused the terms Toolbox Dilemma and Book Club Effect, another root cause hindering ETCS interoperability, and searched for Toolbox Effect. What I found was not my own writing, but maybe even better, discovered that the European Union Agency for Railways had said almost exactly the same thing.

In a report to the European Commission, the Agency writes that because of the freedom of choice offered by the “ETCS toolbox”, trackside implementation varies a great deal between member states and can even vary from one line to another inside the same country. The functions themselves are harmonized. The ways of using them are not, and that produces a large disparity among implementations.

To read more about this article and to have full access to premium content SUBSCRIBE to Basic Subscription Plan or Premium Subscription Plan.