The monitoring system for Gothenburg Tramways has now entered its fifteenth year of uninterrupted operations. The system is in use around the clock by traffic managers at TLI, Gothenburg Tramways’ traffic management and information unit, to remotely monitor switches and signals. The hardware is now being upgraded to safeguard the supply of spare parts.
– The system has worked without problem throughout all these years and has been an excellent help for our traffic managers, says Alberto Pina at the City of Gothenburg. Now we’re upgrading the hardware to safeguard the supply of spare parts and to make operations and maintenance work easier. In this way we can ensure continued use of this important support system for many years ahead.
Control and monitoring system in long and faithful service
There are a number of signal- and switch plants in Gothenburg; they are installations for tramway points and signals and are subject to high safety standards where traffic is controlled by means of signals. As early as 1996 Infracontrol developed a control and monitoring system for this type of essential installation as an assignment from the City of Gothenburg Traffic & Public Transport Authority. The system has been used by Gothenburg’s Traffic Management and Information unit round the clock ever since for the remote control and monitoring of signals, switches and other functions.
The system has now entered its fifteenth year of faithful service, and it’s time to future-proof operations. Alberto Pina at the City of Gothenburg Traffic & Public Transport Authority took the initiative for the upgrade and is looking forward to continued reliable service.
One of the most important functions is to discover risks for disruptions early on and to give traffic managers reliable decision support data, so all information is presented in clear, easy-to-use graphical user interfaces.
Intelligent logging function
The system has an intelligent function that logs all signal changes in the plants at very high time resolutions. Logged information is presented in the form of a graph or via a playback function and is a great support tool during investigations following traffic disruptions.
– Infracontrol’s logging function provides us with full control over every sequence of events in the plants, says Alberto Pina, adding The simple, easy-to-use playback of logged information makes it easier to analyze the course of events when investigating incident reports.
The control system consists of a PLC system monitored by a SCADA system. While the PLC system hardware is being upgraded and the software converted, Infracontrol is taking the opportunity to install the latest version of the software development tool.
– The plants will have the same type of components regarding the CPU, input, output and communications cards, Project Manager Björn Johansson tells us. This means we don’t have to have as many hardware components in stock. The new software handling means that we make service and maintenance work easier.
