抄録
Urban railway lines, upon which large conurbations crucially depend, suffer from chronic congestion and prolonged travel times during peak hours, and improvement of capacity and reduction in travel times are desperately needed. Also, competition with other modes of transport is ever intensifying. These necessitate the realization of a very high performance railway, called in this paper as "ultra-convenient rail transport" (UCRT), which can provide services that much better fit individual passengers' needs. Because needs of the passengers are very diverse, so should the services provided by UCRT. This naturally leads to the conclusion that ultra-high frequency operation is essential for UCRT. In this paper, the authors present the discussions on possible new technologies that can be used to realize UCRT, and the impact they may have on the attractiveness of the services provided by the new railway system. The techniques upon which the authors would discuss in this paper are: (1) moving block signalling systems, (2) on-board turnouts and (3) soft coupling. In the discussion, the pure moving block system (PMB) which stands inside the so-called 'brick wall' assumption and the relative moving block system (RMB) that breaks the 'brick wall' assumption are compared, and significant improvements in performance may be achieved when RMB is combined with on-board turnouts. These techniques contribute to further reduction of headways between trains, and thus contribute to the realization of UCRT.
