Regional passenger transport requires the development of intelligent and eco-friendly technological concepts so that operated trains could provide passengers with increased comfort, speed, safety and flexibility. To that end, regional transport services become more and more competitive. The answer to these requirements are the electric or diesel multiple-units, which guarantee energy-saving operations. Once energy-efficient measures have started to be implemented worldwide, the multiple-units have gained more and more ground against trains, especially in the regional transport segment.
As compared to locomotive trains, multiple-units are preferred vehicles for regional rail transport. The trend of buying multiple-units will continue to strongly increase in the coming years in almost all regions. The demand for these vehicles boosts competition among operators and manufacturers and the market of conventional trains (locomotive-driven) is slightly dropping.
The West-European market of multiple-units, either electric or diesel, is the largest market in the world, with annual investments of around EUR 4 Billion. According to the consultancy company, SCI Verkehr, the market will significantly grow in the next 5 years, influenced by a strong growth especially in the electric multiple-units segment.
A 2% growth is envisaged for the next years following the increasing capacity and replacement of locomotive-driven trains by multiple-units. The procurement of new multiple-units is expected to increase by 2% by 2015.
A multiple-unit has the same traction components as a locomotive-driven train, with the sole difference that its components are installed on each car, as compared to the locomotive-driven train, where the locomotive bears all vital components.
The advantages of multiple-units as compared to locomotive-driven trains consists in a higher acceleration rate, the design, which could be changed during the journey (for example, they could be separated to create the optimum length, some multiple-units can run as a single train, but they can be divided into shorter trains with different destinations) and the reliability level, which is significantly improved. Another advantage is the load per axle, which is generally lighter permitting multiple-units to travel on a lighter infrastructure as well, thus reducing the wear of the line as the tractive effort can be divided between several axles.
Also, in the case of multiple-units, performance estimates are exact taking into account the parts of the vehicles: in the case of a train, if the number of cars is changed to meet the demands, the performance of the acceleration and that of the brake will also change; however, when two or more multiple-units are coupled, the performance of the train will remain the same.
The greatest advantage of multiple-units is the energy efficiency which makes them gain ground against trains in regional passenger transport. Thus, multiple-units are much faster, especially on gradients, mainly due to the fact that a major part of the vehicle’s load is supported by power-driven wheels, while for a locomotive-driven train, the load is supported by the locomotive.
Moreover, multiple-units have a smaller weight per seat. This is very important in frequent stops, as the energy consumed when the train accelerates will significantly grow proportionally with the weight of the train.
Share on:
