The VAL of Torino, First Italian Driverless Automatic Metro

The athletes of the XXth Olympic Winter Games 2006 will certainly borrow the VAL of Torino. The inauguration of this new system of Italian transport will take place before the opening of the Olympic Winter Games 2006. The first 8,3 km section will be exploited with a new type of vehicle, the new VAL208; these trainsets are made up of four carriages with a total length of 52m, an innovation compared to the other VAL systems operated in France. Torino's first underground metro line is based on the VAL (automated light vehicle) system adopted in Lille, Toulouse and Rennes. It starts in the centre of Torino at the current main railway station Porta Nuova, crossing the city centre via Porta Susa railway station and then travelling west to Collegno along Corso Francia. The new vehicle VAL208, produced in the manufacturing unit STS (Siemens System Transportation) in Prague will be of a new design and will benefit of the French experience feedback to be improved. This is the Italian ministry which will authorize the putting into service, for that it asked, via the ministry of French Transport, the intervention of INRETS (National Institute of Research on Transport and their Safety) which followed the system VAL of Lille and its evolutions to Toulouse and Rennes, since the beginning of the 1980s. This article, after a short description of the new line and its specificities, will be focused on the contents of the Safety Case, produced for the opening of the line. The method employed, in order to guarantee already a level of safety equivalent to the other VAL lines in operating, will be developed and commented on. A more precise point will be carried out on the procedures of operating and maintenance specific to the operating with 52 meters vehicles. The conclusion of this article could be a starting point in order to show that the "of mutual acceptance" term also called "cross acceptance" is not an illusion.