IVU: planning begins at Luxtram

From 2017, for the first time in more than 50 years, tramways will again circulate in Luxembourg City. This process is made possible by IVU Traffic Technologies AG which provides its standard solution IVU.suite for the planning and vehicle and personnel allocation of the new Luxembourg tramway.

The purpose of the Luxembourg tramway is to reduce the dense traffic of Luxembourg City and to allow a fast connection between the most important destinations. In the final stage of development, a 16 km stretch will extend from the airport to Cloche d’Or via downtown. The opening of a first section in the district of Kirchberg is already planned for the end of 2017.

By using IVU.suite, planners are already developing the first schedules and rolling scenarios. It was in 1964 that the last tram was removed from circulation in Luxembourg. Therefore, there are no data from the experiment and all schedules must be created from the beginning. For this purpose, the planners operate in the software a simulation in advance of the effects of several variants of schedules to evaluate the best timing and the best rolling times. A rule editor directly integrated into the program interface facilitates the flexible creation of various scenarios.

"With IVU.suite, the company is equipped optimally, whether it is for the operation itself or for its preparation," says Perry Prust, the department manager responsible for the project at IVU. The training of the planning team, partly francophone, is also part of the project. As soon as the first tramways are in operation, the operator company Luxtram will plan and allocate all vehicle and personnel bearings with the IVU system, the user interface of which is available in several languages.

IVU has already been active for a long time on the Luxembourg market and, through a European tendering process, has been able to win against several competitors. Among the IVU customers in Luxembourg are the urban transport company AVL, the TICE transport community and the national railway company CFL.