25 years of travelling with Bilbao Metro
Metro de Bilbao has reached its 25 years of history, a journey in which Thales has supplied its technology so that the citizens can enjoy a safe and satisfactory travel experience.
Since its beginnings in 1994, line 1 was fitted with energy and communication equipment and the station for the Integrated Supervision Control System, which improved thanks to new functionalities for assistance in traffic operation.
To add to this experience in Metro de Bilbao, we participated in extending Line 2, with both new hardware architecture and with simulation and moviola projection functions.
During the decade that followed, between 2002 and 2013, we continued to improve the presentations for the metro network in the sections of San Inazio – Urbinaga, Urbinaga-Sestao, Bolueta – Etxebarri, Sestao – Portugalete, Portugalete – Santurtzi, Mamariga Shuttle and Bidezabal – Ibarbengoa, Etxebarri – Basauri, Kabiezes and the Ariz sheds.
A renovation was also undertaken on the Operation Control Centre (OCC) to use a SCADA software that facilitates the Metro operation. Thales technology has improved the monitoring and regulation of train traffic, managed the energy subsystem, the teleoperation of escalators and moving walkways, lifts, pumping wells, flood detectors, intrusion and fire detection and access control, among others.
OCC of the future
Thales and Metro Bilbao signed a cooperation agreement to develop the future generation of Control Centres, the goal of which was to identify the essential functionalities of the future generation of OCCs.
This agreement included user procedures such as automatisms, tools to support decision-taking, emergency situations as well as the green OCC with energy-saving strategies.
Sustainable commitment
Thales, a world leader in air and railway mobility, is committed to the development of green technologies and those that incorporate eco-design right from their inception. At this time it is working on making trains more intelligent and on optimizing railway traffic to save 30% in its energy consumption.
In its cooperation with Metro Bilbao, which has historically been highly sensitive to the environment, it has steered it in reducing 39% of the traction energy reused from train braking as well as in a pioneering project to sell the excess to the energy supply network, with technology based on reversible energy substations, or in regulating train speed to obtain a reduction in energy consumption.
Thales would like to continue to accompany Metro de Bilbao on this journey in the future, with the latest technologies we are driving forward such as Big Data, Artificial Intelligence or Cybersecurity, which can improve the metro’s operability in the current lines and in the future line 3 alike, or in the Command and Control Post of the future.