Decision-Making Process in the Case of Insufficient Rail Capacity

Abstract

One of the main priorities of transport policy in the EU is to take measures to support railway transport as an environmentally friendly transport mode. An interesting challenge for a railway transport operation is represented with cost items for its operation. This problem is exacerbated if transport flows are routed through a congested railway infrastructure. If some or all transport takes place on congested rail infrastructure, the carrier’s costs increase, which may ultimately lead to withdrawal from the market. The article deals with the impact of insufficient capacity on the rail carrier’s costs. We used a pre-cost calculation methodology to calculate the rail carrier’s additional costs due to the insufficient railway network capacity based on detailed calculation of train costs and proposed a methodology for carrier decision-making in case of insufficient rail infrastructure capacity. The case study showed that the use of a diversion track in case of insufficient planned rail line capacity may not be advantageous for carriers, even with a longer waiting time for capacity to be released. One of the ways to eliminate the negative effects of congested railway infrastructure is investment in the increase of its capacity.

Railway Infrastructure Capacity in the Open Access Condition: Case Studies on SŽDC and ŽSR Networks

“…From a technological point of view, it is important to correctly determine the technical capacity of the track section, that is, to determine the extent of train traffic for a given track section, to show sufficient stability of train traffic even during operational irregularities. The charging of capacity is one of the tools for number of train path regulation [6][7][8]. The economic aspect of capacity takes into account also the risk of paying sanctions to railway undertakings for failure to comply with the RU due to poor organization of train transport (see the introduction of the European Performance Regime (EPR) [9]).…”

“…The condition for the allocation of train paths is sufficient capacity, that is, adherence to defined conditions for ensuring the timetable quality, in particular the transportation time, with which the required buffer time (backup time) is closely related. The remaining capacity (free paths) is offered as bidding catalog paths in "ad hoc" mode to RU [1,6,11].…”

Towards sustainable transport policy framework: A rail-based transit system in Klang Valley, Malaysia

“…In terms of economic perspective in financing large infrastructure such as railway that poises a significant investment, it has been shown that there is a polarity between the cost benefit analysis and a chunk of spillover of economic activities that may impact the society [ 24 ]. The main challenge in operating railway transport is the cost items, especially when the transport flows are routed through a congested railway infrastructure [ 25 ]. Public transport infrastructure has always deemed a reflection of the public services by which most of the Governments in the world are not looking into financial returns or simply return of investment but essentially social returns in starting the planning and development [ 26 , 27 ].…”

Determining the dependence of supplementary charges in the ZSSK CARGO tariff in the context of the customer approach, competitiveness, and globalization

“…The purpose of these topics is, on the basis of this article, to make such analyzes of dependence, on the basis of which it is possible to improve the quality of rail transport and increase its competitiveness in the environment of a globalized society. Articles can be used for research in this direction [18] [19].…”