MINUTES OF COMMITTEE MEETING

RAIL TRANSIT VEHICLE INTERFACE STANDARDS COMMITTEE

February 4-5, 1998

Beckman Center, Irvine CA

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(NOTE: ATTACHMENTS ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE WEBSITE VERSION OF THE MINUTES)

 

1. Attendance (See Attachment 1)

Note that a current list of members with addresses is

provided as Attachment 2. Members should contact Patricia Gerdon of IEEE Standards (FAX 732 562-1571 or email p.gerdon@ieee.org) with any corrections to this list.

Note: Action Items assigned to committee members are

shown in bold italics.

2. Agenda (See Attachment 3)

3. Housekeeping

Minutes. Minutes of the Washington meeting (October 8-9, 1997) were approved by the committee without changes.

Next Meeting. It was agreed that the next meeting will be

held June 17-18, 1998 in Chicago at a site to be determined. Dave Phelps will see if we can tie in with the same hotel being used for a meeting of the PRESS group that week. The agenda will include final review of the WG1 Communications Protocol Standard, resolution of ballot comments from the WG5 Propulsion/Braking/Control Standard, wrapup of any remaining ballot comments from the WG7 Passenger Information Standard, formation of a working group for the Passenger Information Logical Interface and reports from all working groups including the new TCIP Coordinating group led by Rob McHugh.

Internet. Our IEEE website is: http://stdsbbs.ieee.org/groups/railtransit/index.html

In addition Tom Sullivan is maintaining our "nonIEEE" website at:

http://www.tsd.org

Tom's site is linked to the IEEE site. At the present time, all public information is on Tom's site. Tom provided a very informative demonstration of the site to the meeting attendees. Final draft standards are being moved to the IEEE site in a private area, which is necessary because of copyright concerns. The user name and password for the site are "transit" and "railway".

We also have an IEEE email mailing list:

stds-railtransit@ieee.org

The current list of persons signed onto the list is provided as Attachment 4. If you are not yet on the list, please sign on using the simple instructions provided in Attachment 4. If you have an incorrect address on the list please "unsubscribe" and if necessary re"subscribe" according to the instructions. You are the only one who can remove the incorrect address!

4. Coordination

ASME Developments. Stan Canjea has formed an ASME Rail Transit Vehicle Standards Committee to develop "standards for rail transit vehicles, mechanical systems and components and structural requirements", successfully achieving our two year goal of having a sister standards committee in the ASME. The scope of work, submitted to the ASME on January 26th, is provided as Attachment 5 of these minutes. The first activity will be to develop a standard to define the minimum structural requirements for light rail vehicle bodies, using modern crash energy management principles. A draft of this standard is scheduled to be complete by the end of March, and the standard is scheduled to be released two years from now. Those interested in participating in the LRV structural load project should contact Stan (201 491 8859 FAX 201 491-8849, email cbopsxc@njtransit.state.nj.us ).

TCIP Program. Chair McGean distributed the comments submitted on behalf of the group to the TCIP along with a memo documenting agreements reached in negotiations with the TCIP concerning rail message object sets (See Attachment 6) Basically TCIP has to date been primarily concentrating upon bus messages. It has been agreed the present standard will recognize the need for rail message object sets and that in the future our committee will support the TCIP in developing them. McGean requested and received the committee's endorsement of this approach.

Rob McHugh agreed to head a new WG9, Rail Transit Communications Interface Profiles. Assisted by McGean, Rob McHugh will develop a scope and schedule which will be approved by Dave Phelps, Bob Anderson, Linda Sue Boehmer and Lance Cooper whose working groups interface with the TCIP effort.

The importance of the TCIP work was underlined by Lou Sanders who noted that a Notice of Proposed Rule Making can be expected from the Federal government which will mandate compliance with ITS architecture (which includes TCIP). Ten Regional Workshops on this will be held starting in January.

Lou also discussed the proposed Transit Standards Consortium (See Attachment 7) which will serve as an "overarching place to bring everything together" as well as a potential source of funds for standards activities. This will facillitate coordination of our committee's standards work which is becoming a very complex task.

You can download the TCIP standards from TCIP website, www.tcip.org or obtain hard copy by calling the ITE directly at 202 554-8050.

TCIP is also forming a new Task Force to create a supplemental TCIP data dictionary set and message set for transit signal priority. Harvey Glickenstein attended the kickoff meeting for our committee. He and Tom McGean will select a committee member to represent the interests of light rail transit on this task force. Its next meeting is scheduled for Houston in March.

FRA Coordination. Bill Petit reported that the Rail Safety Advisory Committee under the FRA is looking into Positive Train Control and has formed working groups. No official decision on whether to issue new Federal regulations in this area has been reached yet. The Administrator will report to Congress the end of February. Attachment 8 provides a list of ongoing Positive Train Control demonstrations. (Positive Train Control is what mainline railroads call Communications Based Train Control).

Canadian Developments. George Achakji, Senior Advisor for Control Systems Technology for Transport Canada reported on developments in Canada. He is responsible for a three phase study. The first phase, ending now, prepared a State of the Art report on Positive Train Control/Communications Based Signaling which will be out next month. George Achakji agreed to provide Tom McGean information on how to get the report which will be placed on our website. The second phase will study the impact of Positive Train Control on safety. It will take about a year. The third phase will study the impact of Postive Train Control on existing Canadian railroad regulations and standards rules. It will take another six months or so.

Battery Standard. Gene Sansone provided an update on his suggestion the committee consider sponsoring a battery standard. Joint battery buys are currently being pursued by a New York regional consortium of eight transit agencies. Our committee has contacted Richard Berk of PATCO who is leading the consortium effort and placed him on our mailing list. At this time they have not decided whether or not they wish to pursue an IEEE standard. Dave Phelps reiterated that PRESS is developing a battery standard. Dave Phelps will send a copy of the PRESS Battery Standard to Gene Sansone and Claude Gabriel. Don Kane noted that transit agencies need guidelines on how to size a transit battery.

5. Working Group Reports (To facilitate follow up by working group leaders activities have been organized by working group even though the agenda did not follow this approach at the actual meeting).

WG1 (P1473) Communications Protocols on Trains, Bob Anderson Chair.

The WG1 approach using Echelon and TCN is continuing. Discussion concentrated upon Sections 4 and 5 of the draft standard which deal with how Echelon and TCN are used and on the Echelon portion of the standard. In addition the definitions were discussed. The following direction was given to WG1:
    1. Dave Phelps, Bob Anderson and Lance Cooper should coordinate definitions of "train", "car", "basic operating unit", and "specifying authority".
    2. WG1 does not specify environmental conditions. The full committee endorsed this approach.
    3. Rob McHugh was advised that TCIP must adopt SI units for the WG1 protocol to work.
    4. Dave Phelps will provide Bob Anderson a reference to the IEEE message standards being used by TCIP.
    5. The committee endorsed the WG1 plan to specify a pigtail termination for 1473.1 in lieu of specifying a connector.

It was agreed that WG1 would have a final draft available for the full committee's June meeting in Chicago. At that time the full committee will do final review and recommend whether to go to ballot.

WG2 (P1474.1) Communications Based Train Control, Alan Rumsey, Chair.

Two meetings of the reorganized committee have been held to date. Alan Rumsey recommended and the full committee concurred that CBTC interoperability standards continue on hold. The current functional and performance standard will be used to capture interoperability requirements where a consensus exists and will be useful. Briefing charts for WG2 are provided as Attachment 9.

WG3 (P1482) Rail Vehicle Monitoring and Diagnostic Systems, Linda Sue Boehmer, Chair

Draft 3.0 of this standard will be on the web shortly. Major recent activity has been in the area of event recorders. Breifing charts are provided as Attachment 10.

WG4 (P1483) Safety Standards for Software Systems, Jim Hoelscher, Chair.

Version 11 is now being prepared. Stress is on consistency between sections, clarifying scope, and adding examples and an informative appendix. Dave Rutherford has been made Vice Chairman. The goal is to ballot the standard out by the end of this year. Briefing charts are provided as Attachment ll.

WG5 (P1475) VOBC/Propulsion Controller/Motor/Brake, Dave Phelps, Chair.

The committee report is provided as Attachment 12. Attachment 13 summarizes major revisions since the last full committee meeting. Attachment 14 is the PMW Selection Criteria White Paper requested by the full committee at its last meeting. The Final review of the WG5 standard (IEEE P1475) was conducted at the meeting. The draft as reviewed by the committee (including changes made at the meeting) is provided at Attachment 15 to these minutes. WG5 was directed by the committee to incorporate revisions as follows into that draft. After the revisions are made the committee authorized WG5 to either submit the draft to ballot, or at its discretion, return it to the committee for a final review. This authorization was by motion of Linda Sue Boehmer, seconded by Yehuda Gross and passed unanimously. The revisions directed by the committee beyond specific changes made to the draft were as follows:
    1. Make sure that all definitions in 3.2 are actually used in the standard. If not used in the standard delete them.
    2. Make sure the definitions in the Urban Public Transportation Glossary are used when possible if the IEEE Dictionary does not have a suitable definition. Avoid minor editorial changes to the Urban Transportation Glossary which "improve" them in the eye of the working group but are not necessary.
    3. Use WG3 definitions for data recording nomenclature.
    4. Use WG5 definitions for "fail-safe", "safety critical" and other safety related nomenclature.
    5. Determine with Harold Fink, Abe Kanner and Dave Phelps how to handle non-acceleration based propulsion commands (speed command approach) and revise the draft accordingly.
    6. WG5 is to dispose of comments received from Bombardier, Siemens, and the CTA using its best judgement.
    7. Resolve Harold Fink's comment about failure and handover from service to emergency braking.
    8. Resolve Abe Kanner's concern about using 500 Hz instead of 100 Hz command signal in 5.5.1.1. (This is what is used in a European Standard).

Paul Jamieson agreed to head a Definitions Coordination Task. If any working group is using a definition not word for word from an approved source listed in the references to their standard, the definition must be sent to Paul who will maintain a database of all definitions "invented" by our working groups. Approved sources are the IEEE Dictionary by default, the Urban Transportation Glossary preferentially and then any other accepted industry source such as the FRA.

WG6 (P1476) Auxiliary Power Systems, Claude Gabriel, Chair.

Draft 1.1 will be complete the end of February. It will be distributed to all committee members for comments and also put on the web. The next meeting will be held in March. The goal is to have a standard balloted by the end of the year.

WG7 P1477) Vehicle Passenger Information Standards, Lance Cooper, Chair.(Report given by Gene Sansone)

The standard was successfully balloted, achieving the required 75% consensus. Negative and affirmative comments were discussed extensively at the meeting. Resolution of all comments is documented in the ballot report provided as Attachment 16. There were eight substantive changes approved by the committee which will require reballoting. A number of minor editorial changes were also made which do not require reballoting. The edited version of the WG7 standard is provided as Attachment 17 to these minutes. Dave Male provided the AAR environmental requirements in response to his suggestion the standard needed environmental requirements. This issue will be balloted with the understanding that if it does not achieve a consensus, the committee supports leaving the standard as is (without the AAR requirements). Anyone objecting to this decision of the chair should contact Tom McGean by March 1, 1998. The AAR requirements are provided as Attachment 18 to these minutes.

WG8 (P1478) Environmental Standards for Rail Transit Equipment, Chuck Elms, Chair.(Report Given by Mario Papini)

A draft standard has been prepared and is being reviewed by the working group. The standard will address EMI. Dave Phelps agreed to supply Chuck Elms a copy of the PRESS Electrical Subgroup EMI draft and also provide it to Tom Sullivan to put on the web.

6. Other Business

Definitions. The Chair reiterated the definition policy for our standards. It is committee policy to use TRB Glossary definitions if the IEEE Dictionary does not have a requireed transit term. However, TRB Glossary definitions are not consensus standards. Thus, the TRB definition should be provided in the definitions section of the standard so it can be balloted and adopted. A further policy will be that once a definition is balloted and accepted for any standard sponsored by this committee, it will be binding for all standards sponsored by the committee, unless it can be shown to be clearly inapplicable. Working group chairs should thus be careful when reviewing standards prepared by other working groups, to be sure the other group's definitions are suitable for their standard also. Paul Jamieson agreed to head a Definitions Coordination Task. If any working group is using a definition not word for word from an approved source listed in the references to their standard, the definition must be sent to Paul who will maintain a database of all definitions "invented" by our working groups. Approved sources are the IEEE Dictionary by default, the Urban Transportation Glossary preferentially and then any other accepted industry source such as the FRA.

7. Special Thanks

Special thanks are due to Chris Jenks for his help and to the Transportation Research Board for providing the meeting facilities, refreshments, meals and other assistance for the meeting. In particular thanks are due especially to Shiela Moore of the TRB for handling all of the arrangements.

Thanks are also due to PB Transit and Rail Systems and Tom Sullivan for providing the excellent multimedia projector and to Tom Sullivan for his presentation on the website and his continued excellent work maintaining a website for the committee.

8. Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 4:45PM on February 5, 1998.