Transport minister calls consultations over ETCS outage

Transport Minister Martin Kupka has called a meeting to debate problems relating to the outage of the European Train Control System (ETCS) which caused significant disruptions to train services at the weekend. The minister wants to discuss measures that would prevent similar outages in the future.

The European Train Control System (ETCS), which is designed to ensure the safety of trains through automatic intervention in case of human error, went offline on Saturday morning, resulting in widespread delays throughout the day and the suspension of some services. In order to keep trains running Czech Railways switched back to its original security system and all trains were required to operate below the speed of 100 km/h as a precautionary measure until the new system could be restored.