Delays and Timetabling for Passenger Trains

Travel by train has increased steadily in Sweden the last 30 years. The pace has been about two to three percent per year, and we now have twice as many passengers. With growing awareness of the changing climate, the pace is increasing further. A problem that affects both passengers and businesses in Sweden is train delays. One way to describe these is as the share of trains that arrive less than six minutes delayed. About 90% of trains in Sweden meet this standard and have done so for many years. In a way this is impressive, since there are now many more trains. Unfortunately, this also means that more and more passengers are affected by delays. This leads to irritation, threatens the shift of traffic to railways, and costs a lot for society. More trains must arrive on time. This thesis shows that delays are mostly caused by small disturbances – up to a minute or two. Over long journeys, these small disturbances accumulate and sometimes cause quite big delays. These delays mostly occur at stations, where the trains stop, but are then unable to continue on time. It is difficult to say exactly what causes these small disturbances, but the time that the trains are supposed to be at stations – the dwell times – are often too short. Another pattern is seen between delays and weather: if it is either warm or cold, delays increase rapidly. And while winter and snow return every year, they still cause major disruptions. The thesis holds a few suggestions to reduce delays. One is platform markings that show where the trains will stop, where the doors will be, and where the passengers should wait. This is an easy and affordable way to speed up the stops, so that the trains depart on time. Another measure is to remove switches. Then there are fewer parts that can fail, and those that remain can be maintained to a higher standard. A third way is to adapt the railway, so that it better withstands the weather variations of today, and the climate changes of tomorrow. Something that has been done in other countries is to shade and air-condition electronics and signals along the railway. Then the components to not overheat, and more trains run on time. Many things can also be done with timetables, so that more trains run on time, without a rise in costs. More of the planning can be automated. Then more time can be spent on giving trains appropriate dwell times. Infrastructure managers should also do more to evaluate and improve the rules and guidelines that govern timetabling. In this way we can improve timetables gradually from year to year, with fewer and fewer delays as a consequence. These suggestions do not solve all of the railway’s issues, but they would lead to many more trains arriving on time

Beyond Belief : On the Nature and Rationality of Agnostic Religion

AbstractIt is standardly assumed that a religious commitment needs to be based upon religious belief, if it is to be rationally acceptable. In this thesis, that assumption is rejected. I argue for the feasibility of belief-less religion, with a focus on the approach commonly known as “non-doxasticism”. According to non-doxasticism, a religious life might be properly based on some cognitive attitude weaker than belief, like hope, acceptance or belief-less assumption. It provides a way of being religious open exclusively to the agnostic.This thesis consists of an introductory essay and five independent papers. The aim of the introductory essay is to provide a general background and set the stage for the discussion in the papers. Its first major part is about the rationality of religious belief. I assess three major ways of providing rational justification for religious belief: natural theology (with a special eye towards the contemporary argument from the fine-tuning of the universe), the reformed epistemology of A. Plantinga and W. Alston, and voluntarism as advocated by B. Pascal and W. James. I highlight some of the most serious problems associated with these approaches, and argue that these problems are enough to warrant an exploration of belief-less alternatives. The second major part of the introductory essayintroduces belief-less religion and its two main forms: fictionalism and non-doxasticism. Both approaches are presented in some detail, including important accounts and current developments. While I would not deny thatboth approaches can be defended as intellectually feasible and rationally acceptable ways of being religious, I also explain why I think non-doxasticism is to be preferred over fictionalism. Paper I and II concerns the account of non-doxastic religion offered by J. L. Schellenberg. Paper I raises some problems for Schellenberg’s analysis of propositional faith, and presents a way of handling these problems by making faith occasional. Paper II argues that non-doxasticism should be focused on traditional religion rathar than Schellenberg’s simple ultimism. Paper III and IV concerns non-doxasticism on a more general level. Paper III argues for the superiority of non-doxasticism over fictionalism. It contains the argument for exclusive availability, according to which only non-doxasticism (and not fictionalism) is rationally available to the pro-religious agnostic. Paper IV explores the notion of rational, non-doxastic faith, and argues for three desiderata any such faith must meet. Unlike the other papers, Paper V is primarily connected to the first part of the introductory essay, and it concerns the scope and limit of natural theology. It is tentatively argued that perfect being theism lies outside the scope of natural theology, and that its most prominent arguments at best support some kind of deism

Overtakes and dwell time delays for Japanese commuter trains

Reducing train delays important in many countries, even in those like Japan, where punctuality is already high. There is a clearpattern across the literature that the delays typically occur at stations and are recovered on line sections. Previous work has shownthat one explanation for this is that trains interact at stations. When trains have different speeds or stopping patterns, overtakes areimportant even on double-track lines. The latter is often the case in Japanese railways, and we can better understand their railway operations and delays by explicitly studying the way trains overtake each other. This paper uses historical train traffic records from three Japanese railway companies, in total 88 million observations, and finds both that most of the overtakes occur at a small sub set of stations, and that only about seven percent of overtakes were executed as scheduled. We also found that the combined dwell time delays decreased in these rare, successful cases but increased in the other scenarios, with a high degree of statistical significance. Looking at the interactions and the resulting dwell time delays, it is also possible to show and evaluate the actions of dispatchers. We found that they often reduced the delays somewhat by shifting the location of overtakes between trains that were either early or delayed. Finally, we suggest that interactions like overtakes can be used to help calibrate and validate simulation models, as they provide another meaningful and quantifiable way to describe the performance of railways, much like delay distributions and punctuality

Weather-Related Railway Infrastructure Failures in Sweden: An Exploratory Study

The impacts of adverse weather conditions on railway infrastructure can result in delays and cancellations across the railway network and increased maintenance costs. The frequency and severity of extreme weather events are expected to rise due to climate change, making railways more vulnerable. This study aims to gain a better understanding of weather-related infrastructure failures (specifically track, catenary line, signal, and switch failures) between 2015-2020. We do so by using infrastructure failure data from the Swedish infrastructure manager, the Swedish Transport Administration. We use an exploratory data analysis approach to understand which infrastructure assets are most vulnerable to what weather-related phenomena and if infrastructure failures follow any seasonal trends. Results indicate that tracks and catenary lines are most vulnerable to fallen trees, likely linked to windy conditions, while switches are most vulnerable to snow and ice, and signals are most vulnerable to both snow or ice conditions and fallen trees. Additionally, most failures occur during the winter months. These results highlight the importance of increasing the resiliency of railways to extreme weather today and in the future

How and Why Freight Trains Deviate from the Timetable : Evidence from Sweden

European infrastructure managers (IMs) create annual timetables for trains that will run during a year. Freight trains in Sweden often deviate from this by being added, cancelled, delayed or early, resulting in increased costs for IMs and railway undertakings (RUs). We investigate the frequency of and causes for these deviations, using one year of operational data for 48,000 trains, and 15 stakeholder interviews. We find that about 20% of freight trains are added once the timetable has been created, and that cancellations occur for about 35% of freight trains, mostly at the RUs’ initiative. Delays are common: some 40% of departures, 30% of runtimes, and 20% of dwell times are delayed. Running early is even more common: 80% are ready to depart early, and 60% do so, while 40% of runtimes and 75% of dwell times are shorter than scheduled. We find links and feedback loops between the root causes for these deviations and suggest that IMs reserve more of the capacity that is needed for freight trains and instead distribute it throughout the year. This could lead to more appropriate, attractive, and reliable timetables for freight trains, whilst greatly reducing the amount of planning effort

Beslutsprocesser under företagsetablering - En fallstudie av tre företag inom den svenska dryckesmarknaden

Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att empiriskt använda Sarasvathys ramverk på tre utvalda företag och deras etableringsprocess på den svenska dryckesmarknaden. Metod: Vi har valt att använda oss av en abduktiv synvinkel i vår studie. Den valda undersökningsmetoden är kvalitativ där primärdata samlats in från de intervjuer vi genomfört med grundarna för varje företag. Sekundärdatan vi använt i denna uppsats är hämtad från litteratur, artiklar och hemsidor. Teoretiska perspektiv: Den teori vi huvudsakligen utgått ifrån är Sarasvathys teori om causation och effectuation. Annan teori som är relevant för ämnet tas också upp. Empiri: Empirin utgörs av en samling utvald information ur de intervjuer vi utfört med grundarna för de utvalda företagen, kallade Turkos, Rosa & Orange. Resultat: Vi har noterat att i varje studerat företag har det förekommit en blandning av de båda beslutsprocesserna causation och effectuation. Vi har även upptäckt tre faktorer som påverkar beslutsfattande samt huruvida dessa beslutsprocesser tenderar att vara causation eller effectuation. Dessa tre faktorer är storleks-, tids- och konkurrensfaktorn

The effects of flooding on railway infrastructure: A literature review

Flooding of railway infrastructure can lead to significant adverse complications, including infrastructural damage and large-scale disruptions. These can lead to increased economic costs and decreased reliability. Due to climate change, flooding is expected to increase in severity and frequency globally. This paperpresents the findings of a systematic literature review surrounding the effects of flooding on railway infrastructure. 24 relevant papers found via the Scopus database were reviewed. We find that studies focus on quantifying the effects of past and or future flooding events on railway infrastructure, while fewer studies mention adaptation strategies to mitigate the impacts. To understand and predict the future impacts of flooding on railway infrastructure and develop appropriate adaptation strategies, it is important to first quantify and understand past events

Satellite Monitoring of Railways using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR)

There is over 15,600 km of track in the Swedish railroad network. This network is vital for the transportation of people and goods across the country. It is important that this network is monitored and maintained to ensure good function and safety. A tool for monitoring and measuring ground deformation over a large area remotely with high frequency and accuracy was developed in recent decades. This tool is known as Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), and is used by researchers, geo-technicians, and engineers. The purpose of this study has been to evaluate the use and feasibility of the InSAR technique for track condition monitoring and compare it to conventional track condition monitoring techniques. Malmbanan, which is primarily used to transport iron-ore from mines in Sweden to the ports of Luleå, Sweden and Narvik, Norway, is used as a case study for this project; specifically, the section between Kiruna and Riksgränsen. Coordinate matching of measurements from the provided Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) InSAR data and Optram data from survey trains were performed. Then measured changes over different time spans within the two systems were overlapped and classified with different thresholds to see if there is correlation between the two systems. An extensive literature review was also conducted in order to gain an understanding of InSAR technologies and uses.The literature review showed that there is a large potential and a quickly growing number of applications of InSAR to monitor railways and other types of infrastructure, and that the tools and algorithms for this are being improved. The case study, on the other hand, shows that it can be difficult to directly compare measurement series from different tools, each working on different resolutions in terms of both time and space. InSAR is thus not about to replace techniques such as those behind Optram (using measurement trains). Instead, the approaches offer complementary perspectives, each highlighting different types of issues. We find that InSAR offers a good way to identify locations with settlements or other types of ground motions. Especially transition zones between settlements and more stable ground can be challenging from a maintenance point of view and can clearly be identified and monitored using InSAR. With the rollout of national InSAR-data, and the large increase in data accessibility, we see a considerable potential for future studies that apply the technique to the railway area

Living God Pandeism: Evidential Support

Pandeism is the belief that God chose to wholly become our Universe, imposing principles at this Becoming that have fostered the lawful evolution of multifarious structures, including life and consciousness. This article describes and defends a particular form of pandeism: living God pandeism (LGP). On LGP, our Universe inherits all of God's unsurpassable attributes—reality, unity, consciousness, knowledge, intelligence, and effectiveness—and includes as much reality, conscious and unconscious, as is possible consistent with retaining those attributes. God and the Universe, together “God-and-Universe,” is also eternal into the future and the past. The article derives testable hypotheses from these claims and shows that the evidence to date confirms some of these while falsifying none. Theism cannot be tested in the same way