News

SZCZ, the infrastructure manager of the Czech Republic has bought Viriato licences and training from SMA. These will be used to support their strategic work in the long-term development of the high-speed rail network, and as a tool for developing their outputs for the Timetable Redesign (TTR) planning process, including the capacity strategy and capacity models. These TTR process elements are a set of plans and workflows where the wishes of the railway undertakings, both passenger and freight operators, can be balanced with the network capacity available, including planned temporary capacity restrictions (TCRs) for engineering work. With these processes Viriato now forms an integral part of SZCZ's planning business.

We are pleased to announce that the Autumn 2024 Viriato Standard and Enterprise releases have been delivered to our customers.

In addition to the ongoing performance and stability improvements we continuously undertake to improve Viriato, and the implementation of customer specific functionality delivered in their own program versions, the following features are some specific highlights of this product release available to all:

• This release switches to the Microsoft .NET 8 framework. This provides the long-term assurance that Viriato is maintainable for the future.
• To improve security, all program components are now digitally signed with a digital certificate to guarantee the authenticity of the software.
• The railML 2.2 importer handles defined remarks in the train path and timetable nodes, and the route finding has been improved for trains without section information allowing a choice of routing strategies.
• Microscopy on Demand has been extended to include new user selectable behaviour when the microscopic and Viriato models have differences. Also, when working with different infrastructure variants in Viriato Enterprise the conflicts and block occupations indicate whether they belong to the same infrastructure or not. MoD is also now fully functional in Viriato Enterprise and can be linked with different microscopic models for alternative infrastructures.
• In the robustness analysis the primary delay evolution of a robustness analysis run can now be exported to a spreadsheet with the existing outputs.
• A new platform assignment funder module has been added which can search for conflict free platform assignments in stations for existing timetables. This optional module also requires a separate Gurobi licence.

If you are interested in learning more about this release, or Viriato in general, please do not hesitate to contact viriato@sma-partner.com.

We are pleased to announce that the Spring 2024 Viriato Standard and Enterprise releases have been delivered to our customers.

• In addition to the ongoing performance and stability improvements we continuously undertake to improve Viriato, and the implementation of customer specific functionality delivered in their own program versions, the following features are some specific highlights of this product release available to all:
• Timetable remarks can now apply to the whole train and be overridden for individual portions of the train run.
• The Viriato Enterprise mini calendar has now be reorganised so that the functions take up less screen space to improve usability.
• TAF/TAP-TSI fixed nodes can now be defined, and a plausibility check is available to ensure that the user has complied with the rules that trains should be planned to stop at these nodes.
• TAF/TAP-TSI lead RU’s can be updated for multiple trains in bulk.
• TAF/TAP-TSI relevant information has been added to the railML export.
• When importing trains using railML and the data contains differences between the infrastructure in the railML and the Viriato database, the user now has more options for how to treat the missing nodes to ensure that the imported trains are valid in Viriato.
• Rolling stock definitions now have a dated validity, allowing improved management of rolling stock by creating multiple versions of a vehicle which differ in certain attributes.
• In the customer timetable it is now possible to see which operational trains form a commercial train.
• In the graphic timetable and platform occupation views, the line number of a train can now be displayed as a label.
• In the platform occupation view when viewing a topology, the direction of train movements has been clarified with arrows, and the ability to select trains which overlap on the diagram has been improved.
• In Microscopy on Demand (MoD), the use of mixed models where part of the infrastructure is mapped to a microscopic model in an external system, and the remainder of the infrastructure is only mesoscopic has been implemented. This enables the use of larger models and the focusing of detailed effort on areas of specific interest.
• In MoD, the display of signals and stopping points has been added to the topology viewer.
• In the trip time analysis module, when working with commercial trains it is now possible to open these trains from the analysis view.
• The running time calculator now has a user configurable default speed for the case where the speed profiles are not fully defined.
• The robustness analysis can now be carried out only for a specific region of the Viriato infrastructure, allowing the user to focus on the area they are studying without having to model the entire network with the consequential performance implications.
• The path search module now includes additional settings allowing finer control over how the conflict free paths are found. These include settings which control how much additional time can be added to a train run, whether reserves should be kept for performance purposes, the ability to ignore capacity restrictions in nodes where the user believes sufficient capacity will be available regardless of the analysis, an problem analysis mode which identifies the nodes with insufficient capacity when conflict free paths cannot be found and the improved selection of multiple trains for the case where the user is inserting different trains sequentially into the timetable.
• The train conflict report in the conflict detection now considers infrastructure variants and versions when working in Viriato Enterprise.

If you are interested in learning more about this release, or Viriato in general, please do not hesitate to contact viriato@sma-partner.com.

The Viriato timetable planning system has now been in use at DB Regio AG and DB Fernverkehr AG for around 25 years. The contract for the maintenance and further development of Viriato Enterprise has recently been extended for a further eight years. Viriato is currently used by both companies for different planning timeframes (multi-year planning, annual planning and sub-yearly planning). The core task consists of the train path ordering process for the annual timetable at DB InfraGO AG and the distribution of contracted train paths to other processes.

SBB AG has been using Viriato for long-term and medium-term planning since 2003. The maintenance contract for Viriato Enterprise has now been extended for a further four years. In long-term planning, SBB uses Viriato for network design and to develop the formal expansion stages and network utilisation concepts (“Netznutzungskonzepte” or “NNK”) on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office of Transport (FOT). For medium-term planning, Viriato is used to develop concepts for construction works and the network utilisation plans (“Netznutzungspläne” or “NNP”), again on behalf of the FOT. The latest NNP approved by the FOT serves as the basis for the TTR Capacity Strategy for the corresponding year.