Analysis of Railway Signalling Systems to Increase Line and Node Capacity

"Europe is one of the most urbanized continents on the planet: about 75% of its population lives in urban areas” (European Enviroment Agency, 2017). In this urban context, the car is still the widely used way of transport, while public transport manages to capture residual segments of the demand for mobility. However, in a structural framework of obvious concern and criticality for public transport, there is a component of the sector in strong expansion, that is, all rail transports. In addition, the incidence of rail transport is even more significant in large metropolitan systems where daily travel reaches its highest levels of expression. It is known, however, that the supply of transport services is limited by the capacity of the transport system which depends on the physical size of the infrastructure, that is, the capacity of the infrastructure, the number of vehicles, the capacity of the vehicle fleet, the operating time and the traffic regime implemented.