Dimensioning windows for railway infrastructure maintenance: Cost efficiency versus traffic impact

Abstract

The Swedish Transport Administration is introducing a new regime, called maintenance windows, for allocating train free slots reserved for maintenance tasks on the railway infrastructure. In this paper, a model for the assessment and the dimensioning of such maintenance windows is presented, which considers marginal effects on both the maintenance cost and the expected train traffic demand. The aim is to establish quantitative measures that can be used for comparing conflicting capacity requests from infrastructure maintenance and traffic operations on railway networks. The model is demonstrated in a cost benefit analysis for a real life case study on the Swedish Northern Main Line.

Robust Train Scheduling Problem with Optimized Maintenance Planning on High-Speed Railway Corridors: The China Case

“…Later, genetic algorithms, memetic algorithms and the two-phase opportunity-based heuristic were proposed by Budai [21] to solve the preventive maintenance scheduling problem. Lidén and Joborn [22] established maintenance cost model, freight traffic cost model and passenger traffic cost model to evaluate the effects of maintenance windows on the maintenance costs and the train traffic and transportation costs. In addition, they also explored the effects of different maintenance window widths on maintenance costs and freight traffic costs.…”

Relationship between the coordination of railway engineering works and the size of disruptions in train traffic

“…In the second group optimization may refer to:  the schedule of works implementation and of track closures on the analyzed section of the rail network, at the defined and unchanged train timetable [5] or excluding the train timetable analysis [3] or [10],  the train timetable at track closures, which are defined and unchanged [15], whereas in some models it is acceptable to introduce small changes of the track closure starting time within a pre-defined period [4],  simultaneously the train timetable and the works implementation schedule as well as the track closures schedule related to them [8]. This article, discussing the influence of various variants of works implementation on the size of rail traffic disruptions, can be placed in the second of the afore-mentioned groups.…”

“…There have been assumed the following limits for the presented analysis scope:  For the analysis the train timetable optimization model at preset track closures has been used (not changed during the optimization process). Its most important assumptions have been presented here, however, the formal mathematical model formula has not been repeated, as it has been presented in [7];  The technology, phasing and coordination of engineering works on railway lines influences not only the size of traffic disruptions but also the project implementation costs or the risk of the works implementation delay [8].…”

Synteza potrzeb naprawczych nawierzchni kolejowej i ich ranking

“…Analiza kosztów napraw i wymian nawierzchni kolejowej była przedmiotem wielu rozpraw naukowych, np. [10]. W pracach tych za dobrą praktykę uznaje się analizowanie kosztów w odniesieniu do całego cyklu życia nawierzchni kolejowej metodami statystycznymi, z wykorzystaniem materiałów historycznych.…”