SYSTRA Secures Contract for Taiwan’s High-Speed Rail Upgrade

SYSTRA has been awarded a contract for the modernisation of Taiwan’s high-speed rail fleet, through a collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI).

Under the agreement, SYSTRA will carry out the independent safety assessment (ISA) of upgraded on-board automatic train control (ATC) systems installed on high-speed trainsets.

The work forms part of a wider programme to renew key systems on Taiwan’s high-speed railway, which has been operating since 2007.

MHI, a Japanese industrial group involved in the manufacture of Shinkansen trains, has developed a new generation of ATC technology for the project. The system is based on solutions used on the N700S Shinkansen trains operating in Japan. SYSTRA’s role is to verify that the new equipment complies with requirements for reliability, maintainability, availability and safety, as well as with the European standards EN 50126 and EN 50128.

The trains include the N700T model operating on Taiwan’s high-speed line, which is derived from Japan’s N700S Shinkansen design and will be upgraded as part of the programme.

Victoria Chen, Managing Director, SYSTRA Taiwan said:

This project is very important for SYSTRA Taiwan as it allows us to cooperate with the island's key industrial player in the high-speed rail network, which is entering a modernisation phase. We therefore hope that this contract will open the door to other fruitful collaborations with MHI, not only in Taiwan but also throughout Asia and internationally.

SYSTRA’s selection for the contract reflected its experience in system assurance and independent certification, as well as its previous involvement in Taiwan’s high-speed rail development. Between 1990 and 2007, SYSTRA teams worked on multiple phases of the project, including planning, feasibility studies and the review of detailed technical specifications.

During that period, SYSTRA also carried out roles as Independent Checking Engineer and Independent Site Engineer for Taiwan High Speed Railway Corporation, supporting the certification and commissioning of the network.

The new contract represents SYSTRA’s return to Taiwan’s high-speed rail sector at a time when the network is entering a phase of technical modernisation, with cooperation between European and Japanese rail engineering organisations.