Barriers to Implementing Research and Technology into the Rail Industry: A Case Study of TPWS and GSM-R in the United Kingdom

There is considerable pressure for the rail industry to deliver and implement technologies which increase the efficiencies of the railway. The Rail Technical Strategy Europe set out by the International Union of Railways (UIC) outlines what technologies are required to meet future demands. Research is key for such projects to develop, but there is an inherent issue of progressing the research through to the rail industry, with many barriers preventing their implementation. This paper has conducted two retrospective case studies on implementation in the UK; Train Protection Warning System (TPWS) and Global Systems for Mobiles - Railways (GSM-R). Performing a literature analysis has allowed this study to view how the research in the two cases developed and by collecting qualitative data, analysis of the case studies around the topics of technology management, stakeholder management, and human factors from industry and technical experts outline the implementation approach taken. This paper uses the two cases to identify ways to overcome the barriers to implementation and suggests bridging the research - industry gap requires a more collaborative approach earlier in the research cycle to reduce the perceived risk of research and technology implementation, which in-turn increases its economic viability