Like everyone at the moment, the SNCF is trying to save energy. The biggest consumer in France found a solution by developing the Opti-Conduite system. On the screen of their tablet, drivers can adapt their driving.
“Arriving at the platform without braking”
The 500 drivers in the Occitanie region have all been trained and now they can adapt their driving: “Technology has made it possible to go further in driving assistance. It’s a system added to drivers’ tablets that lets them know when they can accelerate and when to get into gear. dead”, if we had to do a road equivalent, and let ourselves slip. It’s as if you were on the highway and you were going up to 130 km/h, the GPS would tell you to put yourself in neutral at such a moment to arrive at the service station without applying a single brake. It saves energy and also material since we use less brake pads on the train”, explains Guillaume Saglier, driver manager and head of the Opti-Conduite project.
Even with a very low gradient as on the fairly flat route between Toulouse and Nîmes (slopes of less than 1%), the savings are significant. And even more at the foot of the Pyrenees: “In the mountains, the system can get us to the start of the platform without having applied a single brake.”
The regional director of the SNCF in Occitania Philippe Bru salutes the fact of doing good to the planet and the savings made, far from being negligible : “We can save between 6 and 10% of energy with the application of these gestures. These are millions of euros since the energy item is a big item of expenditure for the SNCF and the region.
Challenges between drivers
On the driver’s side, we welcome this device with great pleasure. Like Laurine Gronenched, at the controls of this TER Toulouse-Nîmes: “It gives us a little challenge to help save energy in general. It’s huge. We can see it when we’re finished: there’s a color sensor that tells us if we’re on average or if we have optimized our driving.” Drivers now even have fun comparing their driving, trying to get as “green” as possible.
Passenger traffic on TER trains in Occitania has increased significantly in recent years: 20% growth since the start of the year. Since 2019, we have gone from 55,000 travelers per day to nearly 80,000with peaks at 100,000 in midsummer.