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Czech railways to be equipped with security sensors

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Prague, June 15 (CTK) – The Czech state plans to invest one billion crowns in sensors that would help prevent railway accidents and thefts in the next four years within a smart transport strategy that a cabinet meeting is to discuss on Wednesday, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes.

The strategy, worked out by Transport Minister Dan Tok (for ANO), wants to introduce electronic systems worth 12 billion crowns on railroads, motorways and rivers by 2020.

About one fifth of Czech railroads, or 2000 kilometers of the main railway corridors, will be equipped with optical cables that will provide detailed information about any movement near the track, the paper writes.

“The system will help us reliably control the security of the railway corridors,” Tok said.

The sensors would avoid train delays and problems caused by obstacles and defects on the track, he said.

The electronic system would also be a measure against people who steal copper cables from the railway and sell them to scrapyards. Though new rules imposed on scrapyards have markedly lowered the damage, which annually reached 30 million crowns in the past several years, the thefts still cause big problems to railway transport, HN writes.

The Czech Railway Infrastructure Administration has started testing the system, but it does not provide any information on its functioning and the present results of the tests because such details might help people circumvent the system, its spokesman Jakub Ptacinsky said.

In future, the police would be linked to the security system in order to be able to intervene as soon as possible.

Moreover, cameras would be added to the electronic system so that the dispatchers can see whether there is a harmless drunkard walking along the track or whether somebody plans to put a potentially dangerous item on the track and take the appropriate steps.

The system would thus prevent possible terrorist attacks, HN writes.

The cameras would be installed on railway crossings in order to identify the licence plates of vehicles that enter the crossings despite the flashing red light. At crossings on main corridors, laser scanners would warn against any obstacle on the track. This could prevent accidents such as the collision of a high-speed train with a Polish truck in which three train passengers died last year, the paper says.

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