UITP is organising a CBTC market analysis in the framework of the European Union project NGTC (Next Generation Train Control). This project focuses on train control systems in the field of urban and main line European railway systems.

The survey will be conducted among UITP metro and light rail operators in Europe but also beyond Europe, with the aim of obtaining a very large sample of operators worldwide.

The main scope of the survey is to analyse ETCS and CBTC systems commonalities and differences, to develop their convergence and to specify (and possibly standardise at EU and worldwide levels) the functional requirements specific for each railway domain.

The analysis will also address detailed descriptions of various wayside to trainborne interfaces / communications technical specifications & protocols used in existing or planned CBTC projects and the needs for trains to navigate over legacy systems.

The NGTC project

NGTC is the first research project partially funded by the European Commission under the 7^th Framework Programme, where all the main rail system signalling suppliers together with mainline operators and infrastructure managers as well as urban rail operators will be working jointly in developing the next generation of train control systems.

The technical objective of the project is to pave the way for standardized train control systems for mainline and urban domains which provide complete ATP (Automatic Train Protection), ATO (Automatic Train Operation), and ATS (Automatic Train Supervision) functionality and support train operation from Grade of Automation GOA0 to GOA4 (fully unattended operations), whilst significantly reducing total cost of ownership and life cycle costs, and achieving an overall improvement in performance at lower cost.

The NGTC project was launched in September 2013 and will run until October 2016.