Also note that the attendance sheet can be used as a receipt for the $20 collected for lunch and coffee.

Minutes. Minutes of the Irvine meeting (Feb. 18-19 1997)were approved by the committee as corrected. Ron Kangas moved that the briefing charts of Bob Anderson and Hubert Kirrmann from the Irvine meeting be added to that meeting's minutes to make it clear what the group had unanimously approved in Irvine with regard to the WG1 strategy and technical approach. Bob Anderson seconded the motion and it passed without objection. The briefing charts are included as Attachment 4 to these minutes which are to be considered a part of the Irvine minutes.

Next Meeting. It was agreed that the next meeting will be held October 8-9, 1997 in Washington DC.

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

The IEEE site is linked to Tom's. Soon we hope to have them even better integrated.

We have an IEEE email mailing list:

Our previous attempts to put everyone's name into this list so we can use it for communications have foundered because of difficulty reading the email addresses, frequent changes in email addresses, and the clerical burden of creating and maintaining a 150-200 address mailing list. To solve this we are asking all members and friends to put themselves on our mailing list by following the instructions of Attachment 5 to these minutes. Please follow these instructions. They will take you five minutes and will result in a totally up-to-date email list we can use to keep in touch with you all at virtually no cost.

New Federal Regulations: The December 27, 1996 Federal Register had proposed changes to OMB A-119 "Federal Participation in the Development and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards and in Conformity Assessment Activities" for which comments were requested. We will be checking whether the final regulations have been issued, The revisions are available electronically at:

Also of importance is the National Institute of Standards and Technology Plan for Implementation of PL 104-113. A copy was distributed at the Chicago meeting and is also available on the web at:

APTA Conference Papers. Papers on our IEEE Standards were given at the recent APTA Rapid Rail Conference by Lance Cooper (WG7), Dave Rutherford (WG2), Pierre Zuber(WG1), Pradip Madan (WG1), Jim Hoelscher (WG4) and Chris Holliday (WG3). Sessions were chaired by Tom McGean (RTVISC Chair) and Tom O'Brien (WG3). In addition to the authors and session chairs, Lou Sanders of APTA is to be thanked for helping achieve this excellent representation. Those who gave papers are advised APTA does not restrict their publication. If the paper is in electronic form email it as a Word 6 or HTML attachment to Tom Sullivan to put it on his website or to Tom McGean who will try to get it posted to the IEEE website.

ASME Developments. Stan Canjea has submitted a proposal to the ASME to form an ASME Rail Transit Vehicle Standard Committee "…to develop consensus based safety standards for rail transit vehicle mechanical systems and components of structural requirements." Its first mission will be development of a standard for structural and crashworthiness requirements of light rail transit vehicles. It will go before the ASME Board on Safety Codes in September. Those interested in participating in the buff load project should contact Stan (201 491 8859 FAX 201 491-8849). Eric Wolf, the Vice President for Engineering of NACO and future chair of the ASME Rail Transportation Division attended our meeting and will attempt to also attend our next meeting in Washington to provide an update on developments with our ASME rail transit standards committee.

ITS SCC32 Coordination. Tom McGean attended the ITS SCC32 Committee meeting in Washington during the ITS Conference and discussed coordination with SCC32 chair Bob Gottschalk. Bob and Tom agreed that Lance Cooper will be the RTVISC liaison with SCC32 and, to accomplish full coordination, Bob has agreed to make Lance a full member of the SCC32 committee.

TCIP Program. Jim Kemp is the official RTVISC liaison with the TCIP Standards project. TCIP is developing a national transit communications interface protocol. It is to enable electronic data exchange among transit agency departments, traffic and transportation management entities and information service providers. Possible interfaces with our work exist with regard to passenger information and health monitoring areas, among others. TCIP is one of many activities being coordinated by the USDOT Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office. At present TCIP is using SAE J1708 for equipment onboard buses and passenger information. Jim Kemp does not believe the SAE protocol can do the job for our WG1, Communications Protocol Aboard Trains, but it is possible we will need a gateway to J1708. Information on the TCIP project is available on the web at:

AAR Coordination. Jim Kemp attended the first "Town Hall Meeting" on standards for in-train equipment monitoring sponsored by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) on April 17^th. His report is provided as Attachment 6 to these minutes. Attending our Chicago meeting in addition to Howard Moody, were Fred Carlson and Thomas Nast from the AAR test facility in Pueblo. Fred was heavily involved in developing the AAR specs adopted for the Electronically Controlled Pneumatic Brake (ECP) system. They have tested a number of electrical connectors and selected one to be the AAR standard for ECP. Fred will send Jim Kemp full information. An integrated electric/pneumatic connector is not being used as it was found to be too bulky. The next step is to test for interoperability. Tom Nast reported on the technical details of ECP. They conducted a survey of a number of protocols and selected LonWorks. They believe the connector reliability is very good. AAR is not interested in a radio based system at this time. Every car has a car control device (CCD). CCD regulates brake cylinder pressure and monitors system health (optional). Messages are sent only when there is a problem; continuous monitoring is not required. AAR has exceptional facilities for testing. RTVISC WG leaders were urged to identify any testing/validation needs so the committee can request TCRP project funding.

PRESS Developments. Dave Phelps noted that Tom McGean has been placed on the PRESS committee to provide liaison. (The PRESS committee is developing safety standards for commuter rail in response to mandates from Congress and the FRA.) The schedule is to have voluntary standards in place by the end of 1998 and the process is on track. Although initially set up for commuter rail, Amtrak is a very active member of the PRESS group. PRESS is developing both standards (which will be suitable for incorporation into Federal regulations) and recommended practices. PRESS is collaborating with AAR, NFPA and IEEE. They plan to use the voltage regulation standards developed by Claude Gabriel under our WG6 Auxiliary Power Standards effort. Attachment 6A provides the PRESS briefing charts used at our meeting.

5. Working Group Reports (To facilitate followup 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. As requested by the full committee in Irvine, Bob's group provided a session for Worldfip to present their protocol. The working group decided after the presentation to continue with the dual TCN/LonWorks approach which is summarized in Attachment 4 of these minutes. The IECTC9 committee has voted 17-4 to adopt the TCN standard. This means we can reference an actual TCN standard instead of just a draft standard. After the TCN vote, Bob Anderson repolled his committee to confirm their position vis-à-vis the use of LonWorks and TCN in the IEEE Standard. 17 responses were received. 11 agreed with the WG1 position, 5 agreed with comments, and one disagreed saying LonWorks should not be part of the standard at all. The agreed upon position will state that in open trainsets if vehicles may be coupled and uncoupled then 1473.2 (TCN) should be the standard used between cars. If trains don't need to be interoperable then 1473.1 (LonWorks) can be used as the trainbus. The WG1 schedule is to polish up and finalize the wording of the standard and bring it to ballot as soon as possible. It should be noted that in Irvine the committee suggested that diagrams illustrating the protocols be provided in an Annex to the standard for information purposes. Attachment 7 provides further details on the WG1 report.

WG2 (P1474) Communications Based Train Control, Dave Rutherford, Chair. (Report given by Denny Pasco) The attempt to obtain train to wayside interface information from suppliers had not been productive, to the point that serious consideration was being given to abandoning this standards effort. Venkat Pindiprolu and Ron Kangas arranged a meeting of transit agencies during the APTA Rail Conference in Washington which was well attended, including Nabil Ghaly of NYCT, John Evans of BART, Marty Lukes of WMATA, John LaForce of SEPTA, Patty DeVlieg of MUNI and Vic Grappone of LIRR. Afterwards Nabil Ghaly and John Evans attended full day meetings of both WG2 and WG4 in Washington. At the Washington WG2 meeting Nabil Ghaly said he supports the standards effort and said that if something was available in October, NYCT would make use of it for the Canarsie Line RFP. (See Attachment 8 for WG2 meeting minutes) Nine signal suppliers attended and all committed to the standards effort and to supply the needed interface information. To achieve the needed progress a task force was formed, made up of representatives from the nine suppliers plus Tom McGean, Dave Rutherford, and Geoff Hubbs of NYCT. The Task Force will meet for three days to define topographic data storage and wayside to train and train to wayside date flow functions including data bit structure. The goal is to permit any supplier's train to operate over any supplier's wayside communications based signalling system with a translator device. This goal is limited to ATP function interoperability. The Task force meeting will be held the last week of July. Dave Rutherford must have evidence that suppliers have provided the interface information required to make this meeting fruitful. McGean and Rutherford will confer on July 7^th to determine if this milestone has been accomplished and the meeting should proceed. If the decision is not to proceed, a notice will be posted on the WG2 website. To achieve the required success by October of this year, WG2 will have to be made its own balloting group. If you are a voting member of the full committee and would like to have balloting rights on WG2, and are not on WG2, please provide a written, faxed, or emailed request to Dave Rutherford with a copy to Tom McGean by July 20, 1997.

WG3 (P1482) Rail Vehicle Monitoring and Diagnostic Systems, Linda Sue Boehmer, Chair. A second draft of the standard has been prepared and comments and action items are now being incorporated. It should be ready by the end of June. A summer meeting of the WG is planned. Key participants are Linda Sue Boehmer, Chris Holliday, Tom O'Brien and Pat Murphy. Details are provided in Attachment 9.

WG5 (P1475) VOBC/Propulsion Controller/Motor/Brake, Dave Phelps, Chair. WG5 has their outline complete and 90% of the required material on hand. A complete draft is expected to be available by the middle of July. Informal review by the full committee will be undertaken at the October meeting. A status report with list of WG members is provided as Attachment 12.

WG6 (P1476) Auxiliary Power Systems, Claude Gabriel, Chair. Information is being collected, assignments have been made, and a draft is being prepared. It is anticipated the draft will be ready for the full committee at its winter meeting. The report of WG6 is provided as Attachment 13.

WG7 P1477) Vehicle Passenger Information Standards, Lance Cooper, Chair. The progress report for WG7 is provided as Attachment 13A. The full committee spent a portion of July 25^th and all of July 26^th going over the latest WG7 draft. There was a lengthy discussion on whether or not the logical aspect of the passenger information standard should be addressed. Lance agreed to poll the industry on the logical interface for his standard. Russ Jackson said there is no need to define the supplier's LAN language. Dave Phelps said this would be correct if the intention was to use descendents of current LAN systems, but he believed the goal was to go to a full vehicle LAN to take over functions previously done locally and in this situation standards would be needed for messages. Format would be the responsibility of WG1, but necessarily content would be the responsibility of WG7. Bob Anderson agreed with Dave Phelps. TCN and LonWorks have means to define the format. Jim Kemp stressed that small agencies prefer uniform bus/rail equipment. Passenger information may require us to cite the TCIP protocol being developed for buses, but they now use J1708 which has problems. Ron Kangas agreed bus and rail should use common passenger information. Lance reiterated he would provide information on the message content but he was not sure industry agreement would be possible. It was agreed that Lance will provide Information Content sections in the WG7 standard, but mark them reserved at this time. Jim Kemp and Yehuda Gross agreed to work with Lance Cooper to help with getting message content information from manufacturers, especially on the bus side.

There was also extensive discussion about how to refer to standards under development by other working groups. At the present time, Lance will cite other RTVISC standards using the latest draft available from the working group. In the case of WG1, he will refer directly to the LonWorks and TCN standards at this time rather than the WG1 standard. Bob Anderson will provide him the references. It was agreed that after balloting, we may hold up standard publishing until it is possible to cite balloted standards in the case where one RTVISC working group is citing another's standard. Tom McGean will discuss these issues with Rosemary Tennis of IEEE Standards.

There was also considerable discussion of battery and line voltages. It was agreed that Claude Gabriel will provide Lance battery and LVDC voltages for LRT, rail, and commuter rail by July 15, 1997 and Dave Phelps by the same date will provide him PRESS thinking on the subject.