A Systems View of Railway Safety and Security

This chapter approaches the concerns over safety and security of modern mainline and light railways from a systems perspective. It addresses the two key concerns from the view point of systemic emergence arising from the interaction between all the principal constituents of the railway system, namely infrastructure, rolling stock, energy and human element comprising workers, passengers and the neighbours of the railways

Limits and opportunities of risk analysis application in railway systems

Risk Analysis is a collection of methods widely used in many industrial sectors. In the transport sector it has been particularly used for air transport applications. The reasons for this wide use are well-known: risk analysis allows to approach the safety theme in a stochastic - rather than deterministic - way, it forces to break down the system in sub-components, last but not least it allows a comparison between solutions with different costs, introducing de facto an element of economic feasibility of the project alternatives in the safety field. Apart from the United Kingdom, in Europe the application of this tool in the railway sector is relatively recent. In particular Directive 2004/49/EC (the "railway safety directive") provides for compulsory risk assessment in relation to the activities of railway Infrastructure Managers (IMs) and of Railway Undertakings (RUs). Nevertheless the peculiarity of the railway system - in which human, procedural, environmental and technological components have a continuous interchange and in which human responsibilities and technological functions often overlap - induced the EC to allow wide margins of subjectivity in the interpretation of risk assessment. When enacting Commission Regulation (EC) No 352/2009 which further regulates this subject, a risk assessment is considered positive also if the IM or RU declare to take safety measures widely used in normal practice. The paper shows the results of a structured comparative analysis of the rail sector and other industrial sectors, which illustrate the difficulties, but also the opportunities, of a transfer towards the railway system of the risk analysis methods currently in use for the other systems

Railway operations in icing conditions: a review of issues and mitigation methods

This article focuses on studying the current literature about railway operations in icing conditions, identifying icing effects on railway infrastructure, rolling stock, and operations, and summarizing the existing solutions for addressing these issues. Even though various studies have been conducted in the past on the impact of winter, climate change, and low temperatures on railway operations, not much work has been done on optimizing railway operations under icing conditions. This study demonstrates that further research is needed to better understand ice accretion and its effects on different parts of railways. It appears that railway infrastructure faces serious problems during icing conditions, and additional research in this field is required to precisely identify the problems and suggest solutions. Therefore, it is important to enhance the knowledge in this area and suitable optimal and cost-effective ice mitigation methods to minimize icing effects on railway operations and safety

Passenger Rail Statistics Following the Privatisation of British Rail.

In common with other major industries, the rail industry requires significant amounts of high quality information for successful operation. Information relating to the demand and supply of rail services is required to ensure that appropriate services are provided at minimum cost. Given the recent explosion of information technology, data on demand and supply is readily accessible and much improved. The benefits to the industry arising from such improvements should be maintained under the new organisational structures brought about by the 1993 Transport Act. It is the aim of this note to outline current sources of information and key statistics and raise the issue of what provisions are being made to ensure that they are maintained in a consistent and compatible format following privatisation

Functional Urban Areas as the Focus of Development Policy in Poland

This article presents the premises, current status and the prospects of using functional urban areas as the focus of Poland's development policy. For the past 10 years, cities, especially large ones, have been increasingly impacting on their surrounding areas defined as functional urban areas. The size of those areas is determined by the process of suburbanisation. The article emphasises the issue of uncoordinated development of functional urban areas surrounding core cities and on grassroot and top-down attempts to integrate their development

Barriers to Transnational Passenger Rail Services in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina – A Qualitative Perspective

Railway infrastructures and services in the countries of former Yugoslavia have been in a downward spiral since the early 1990s. There have been scattered investments to lift services up to appealing levels after the war, but a continuous downward trend persists in all important performance indicators. After war-attributed abandonment, numerous lines lost services permanently, numbers of services dwindled, especially across borders, and service speeds decreased. This research takes Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina specifically as survey objects. It aims to identify the barriers in these two countries that withheld passenger rail from a positive development as in other European countries during the same period. For this purpose we carried out 11 interviews with stakeholders in various railway-related institutions. The transcripts are analysed qualitatively with thematic analysis to gain an overview of organisational and institutional barriers for development of railways. This is followed by a cause-effect analysis with Causal Loop Diagramming. The result: ad-hoc decision-making is clearly connected to the insignificance of railways. As immediate measures to counter the downward spiral by means of strategic long term planning, we identify (1) service benchmarking, (2) a clear vision for improvement of service quality, and (3) empowerment of ministries in a long term

The Full Cost of High-Speed Rail: An Engineering Approach

This paper examines the full costs, defined as the sum of private and social costs, of a high speed rail system proposed for a corridor connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco in California. The full costs include infrastructure, fleet capital and operating expenses, the time users spend on the system, and the social costs of externalities, such as noise, pollution, and accidents. Comparing these full costs to those of other competing modes contributes to the evaluation of the feasibility of high speed rail in the corridor. The paper concludes that high speed rail is significantly more costly than expanding existing air service, and marginally more expensive than auto travel. This suggests that high speed rail is better positioned to serve shorter distance markets where it competes with auto travel than longer distance markets where it substitutes for air. .

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

Competition in Rail Transport: A New Opportunity for Railways?

Throughout Europe, and in many other parts of the world, railways are suffering from declining market share and deteriorating financial performance; consequently there is renewed interest in deregulation and the introduction of competition into rail transport as a way of improving performance. An EC Directive now provides for access to rail infrastructure for third parties to run their own international trains in some circumstances. After a long debate, the British Government in July 1992 published a White Paper (New Opportunities for the Railways) which aimed to go much further. It would both open access to the infrastructure for any licensed operator and franchise out existing passenger services via a competitive bidding process; all freight services would be privatised outright. Draft legislation to implement these proposals, as well as a string of consultation documents on details have also been published, and an Interim Report from the Select Committee of Members of Parliament examining the proposals has appeared. This paper review the debate that is currently raging over the British government proposals. It considers the potential for innovation and cost savings which they offer, as well as the problems of increased transactions costs, lack of competitive bidding and other potential inefficiencies of the new system. The key issue of the charging regime for access to the infrastructure is also addressed. It is concluded that competition in the provision of freight services is desirable, but that passenger services present many more problems, and that the proposals need modification if they are to meet their objectives