Socioeconomic benefits of the Shinkansen network

High speed rail (HSR) networks have been an essential catalyst in stimulating and balancing regional economic growth that ultimately benefits the society as a whole. Previous studies have revealed that HSR services sustainably yield superior social values for people, especially for adults and those of working age. This has become an advantage of HSR networks over other forms of public transportation. The Shinkansen network in Japan is one of most successful HSR models. Its services bring significant social advantages to the communities it serves, such as shorter travel times and increased job opportunities. Nevertheless, the societal impact of HSR networks depends on many factors, and the benefits of HSR could also be overrated. The goal of this research is to measure the socioeconomic impacts of HSR on people of all genders and age groups. The outcomes could lead to more suitable development of HSR projects and policies. This study investigates data sets for Japanese social factors over 55 years in order to determine the impacts of HSR. The assessment model has been established using Python. It applies Pearson’s correlation (PCC) technique as its main methodology. This study broadly assesses social impacts on population dynamics, education, age dependency, job opportunities, and mortality rate using an unparalleled dataset spanning 55 years of social factors. The results exhibit that younger generations have the most benefits in terms of equal educational accessibility. However, the growth of the HSR network does not influence an increase in the employment rate or labour force numbers, resulting in little benefit to the workforce

Need and Opportunities for a ‘Plan B’ in Rail Track Inspection Schedules

AbstractTrack inspection is purposely performed to recover tracks from defects and damage and eliminate potential safety hazards. It is scheduled through an exhaustive process that usually integrates many disciplines such as optimization, statistics, risk management, etc. Spending so much of a monetary and an emotional investment in an original schedule (referred to as master schedule hereafter) that the scheduler wants to deliver might be a good excuse not to develop a solid ‘Plan B’. Plan B here refers to scheduler responses or a contingency plan when the master schedule does not go as expected. It is found that there is often low to moderate probability of a crisis occurring when a schedule is executed in a real environment. Nevertheless, its impact can leave transportation services to the mercy of the disruption as shown by the Christmas 2014 incident where a huge volume of passengers using King's Cross and Paddington services experienced both inconvenience and discomfort due to engineering delays and train disruption. Thus, this paper aims to discuss the potential of considering ‘Plan B’ or contingency plan if incidents arise that were not expected during track inspection schedule execution. Benefits, general guidelines and relevant strategies for creating a contingency plan are also discussed. We highlight the rationale to support the claim that an original schedule of track inspection jobs should be adapted to respond to a new context e.g. inspection vehicle machine breakdown, new inspection requests, man-made hazards, terrorist attack, extreme weather, climate change, etc. It is however proposed to develop an appropriate set of performance measure that is used to guide rescheduling in track inspection due to financial, equipment inventory, manpower, safety regulations, time and spatial constraints

Using Group Support Systems to Facilitate the Research Process

Group Support Systems (GSS) and their effects on group processes and outcomes have been an object of intense study over the past ten years. The purpose of this paper is to take a different perspective with respect to GSS research. Rather than discussing research about GSS, we will discuss the capabilities of GSS tools to support the process of doing research. A model of the steps involved in the research process is discussed and specific suggestions for the application of GSS tools are mapped to these research steps. GSS can provide a variety of benefits to researchers, including basic meeting support for multiple researchers in developing elements of the research project, electronically recording data from subjects, performing data analysis, and integrating information and data across the entire research process

An Analysis of Urbanisation Sustainability Effect from High-Speed Rail in Honshu Area

Several decades of the High-Speed Rail (HSR) in Japan have generated direct impacts on Japanese’s life regarding reducing short time travel, enabling newly accessible areas, and increasing transport market. [...

A hybrid Delphi-AHP multi-criteria analysis of Moving Block and Virtual Coupling railway signalling

The railway industry needs to investigate overall impacts of next generation signalling systems such as Moving Block (MB) and Virtual Coupling (VC) to identify development strategies to face the forecasted railway demand growth. To this aim an innovative multi-criteria analysis (MCA) framework is introduced to analyse and compare VC and MB in terms of relevant criteria including quantitative (e.g. costs, capacity, stability, energy) and qualitative ones (e.g. safety, regulatory approval). We use a hybrid Delphi-Analytic Hierarchic Process (AHP) technique to objectively select, combine and weight the different criteria to more reliable MCA outcomes. The analysis has been performed for different rail market segments including high-speed, mainline, regional, urban and freight corridors. The results show that there is a highly different technological maturity level between MB and VC given the larger number of vital issues not yet solved for VC. The MCA also indicates that VC could outperform MB for all market segments if it reaches a comparable maturity and safety level. The provided analysis can effectively support the railway industry in strategic investment planning of VC

Adaptation Becoming Business as Usual: A Framework for Climate-Change-Ready Transport Infrastructure

Extreme weather damages and disrupts transport infrastructure in a multitude of ways. Heavy rainfall and ensuing landslides or flooding may lead to road or rail closures; extreme heat can damage road surfaces, or cause tracks, signalling or electronic equipment to overheat, or thermal discomfort for passengers. As extreme weather is expected to occur more frequently in the future, transport infrastructure owners and operators must increase their preparedness in order to reduce weather-related service disruption and the associated financial costs. This article presents a two-sided framework for use by any organisation to develop climate-change-ready transport infrastructure, regardless of their current level of knowledge or preparedness for climate change. The framework is composed of an adaptation strategy and an implementation plan, and has the overarching ambition to embed climate change adaptation within organisational procedures so it becomes a normal function of business. It advocates adaptation pathways, i.e., sequential adaptive actions that do not compromise future actions. The circular, iterative structure ensures new knowledge, or socio-economic changes may be incorporated, and that previous adaptations are evaluated. Moreover, the framework aligns with existing asset management procedures (e.g., ISO standards) or governmental or organisational approaches to climate change adaptation. By adopting this framework, organisations can self-identify their own level of adaptation readiness and seek to enhance it