Overview of Positive Train Control (PTC) and Railway Collision Avoidance System (RCAS)

Cars, plane, boat, train and all future vehicle will be smarter and will provide more safety and comfortable transportation A lot of transport research are dedicated to response to one question: How can accidents be avoided?. The collision avoidance systems based on infrastructure-less communications for Automatic Identification System (AIS) for maritime transportation, Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System / Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (TCAS/ADS-B) for aircraft, and the Car-2-Car communication system (C2C) for road transportation, are deployed or in an advanced stat of development. We find no satisfactory solutions to avoid collision in the case of Train-to-Train intersection or in case of Train-To-Car (railroad crossing). Collisions with train are generally catastrophic, as they cause severe damage to life and property. The cause of train collisions is frequently attributed to a "chain of unfortunate circumstances" or "human error" The rail industry has been quite active in applying IT to rail transportation applications. While there are numerous examples of the application of advanced technologies to improve the safety and efficiency of rail transportation, we present in this paper an overview of two system developed to avoid trains collisions: Positive Train Control (PTC) and Railway Collision Avoidance System (RCAS).