The Impact of the Law on Industrial Disputes in the 1980s: Report of a Survey of Public Transport Employers

This paper reports the results of one part of a research project which investigated the nature and extent of the impact of the labour legislation enacted between 1980 and 1990 on the conduct of the industrial relations and the processes by which this came about. Interviews were carried out with managers in three major public sector transport organisations. All three were subject to radical organisational change during the period under review and had quite extensive experience of dispute in this time. While they had made greater use of the law than employers in other sectors covered by the research project, there were mixed views on the results of this resort to the law. In general the law appeared to be a subsidiary part of, and influence on, the management of the process of change rather than an independent factor influencing management's relations with trade unions and the workforce.

An Economic Analysis of Regulation of Urban Public Transport in Europe

The objective of this work is to apply economic analysis to urban public transport, at both a theoretical and an empirical level, in order to assess efficiency in terms of both production and consumption. Our study is the first attempt to look systematically at this issue for urban transport at the European level. In so doing we aim to identify the organisational and regulatory features of systems that are efficient in both production and consumption. Our starting point is an admittedly simplified classification of three broad types of regulatory structure in urban public transport in Europe. 1. Regulated, publicly owned monopolies (`the classical model'). This is the dominant organisational form in 10 member states (AT, BE, DE, ES, LU, GR, IE, IT, NL, PT), although there may be in these states some cities that have variations on this regulatory structure (e.g. regulated, private monopoly) or may have an alternative regulatory structure (e.g. some cities in ES have network management contracts). 2. Limited Competition Models. This has a number of variants. The two most common are the Scandinavian model, based on minimum cost tenders at a route level and represented in three member states (DK, FI, SE), with a variant also in Norway, and the French model, based on network management contracts. 3. Deregulated, Free Market Models. This is dominant form in GB outside London. In London route based tendering has been implemented

Generalized Algorithms for Crew Planning: Survey and Future Directions for Railways

This paper studies the crew planning problem as observed in the transportation industry. We first survey the existing literature on crew scheduling applications in railways and airlines. Next, we identify the synergies in the two domains and propose new directions for railway crew scheduling inspired from the applications in airlines

Crew Planning at Netherlands Railways: Improving Fairness, Attractiveness, and Efficiency

The development and improvement of decision support voor crew planning at Netherlands Railways (NS

Crew Management in Passenger Rail Transport

__Abstract__ Crew management in passenger rail transport is an important factor that contributes to both the quality of service to the railway passengers and to the operational costs of the train operating company. This thesis describes how the (railway) Crew Management process can be improved with the introduction of advanced decision support systems, based on advanced mathematical models and algorithms. We provide a managerial perspective on the change process, related to the introduction of these systems, and give an overview of the lessons learned. We have shown that introducing decision support can give substantial improvements in the overall performance of a railway company. Within NS, the support for the Crew Management process has led to a stable relationship between management and train crew. In addition, the lead-time of the planning process is shortened from months to hours and NS is now able to perform scenario analyses, e.g., to study effects of adjusting the labour rules. Also, NS can adjust their service when severe weather conditions are expected, by creating a specific winter timetable shortly before the day of operation. Finally, we also introduced a decision support system for real-time rescheduling of crew duties on the day of operations. This enables us to adapt the actual crew schedules very quickly. As a result, we reduce the number of cancelled trains and fewer trains will be delayed in case of unforeseen disruptions

Train planning in a fragmented railway: a British perspective

Train Planning (also known as railway scheduling) is an area of substantial importance to the success of any railway. Through train planning, railway managers aim to meet the needs of customers whilst using as low a level of resources (infrastructure, rolling stock and staff) as possible. Efficient and effective train planning is essential to get the best possible performance out of a railway network. The author of this thesis aims, firstly, to analyse the processes which are used to develop train plans and the extent to which they meet the objectives that they might be expected to meet and, secondly, to investigate selected new and innovative software approaches that might make a material difference to the effectiveness and/or efficiency of train planning processes. These aims are delivered using a range of primarily qualitative research methods, including literature reviews, interviews, participant observation and case studies, to understand these processes and software. Conclusions regarding train planning processes include how the complexity of these processes hinders their effectiveness, the negative impact of the privatisation of British Rail on these processes and the conflicting nature of objectives for train planning in the privatised railway. Train planning software is found not to adequately support train planners in meeting the objectives they are set. The potential for timetable generation using heuristics and for timetable performance simulation to improve the effectiveness of train planning are discussed and recommendations made for further research and development to address the limitations of the software currently available