Methods for Capacity Allocation in Deregulated Railway Markets

Methods for Capacity Allocation in Deregulated Railway Markets
Author: Abderrahman Ait Ali
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
Total Pages: 51
Release: 2020-10-01
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9179297714

Faced with increasing challenges, railways around Europe have recently undergone major reforms aiming to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the railway sector. New market structures such as vertical separation, deregulation and open access can allow for reduced public expenditures, increased market competition, and more efficient railway systems. However, these structures have introduced new challenges for managing infrastructure and operations. Railway capacity allocation, previously internally performed within monopolistic national companies, are now conferred to an infrastructure manager. The manager is responsible for transparent and efficient allocation of available capacity to the different (often competing) licensed railway undertakings. This thesis aims at developing a number of methods that can help allocate capacity in a deregulated (vertically separated) railway market. It focuses on efficiency in terms of social welfare, and transparency in terms of clarity and fairness. The work is concerned with successive allocation of capacity for publicly controlled and commercial traffic within a segmented railway market. The contributions include cost benefit analysis methods that allow public transport authorities to assess the social welfare of their traffic, and create efficient schedules. The thesis also describes a market-based transparent capacity allocation where infrastructure managers price commercial train paths to solve capacity conflicts with publicly controlled traffic. Additionally, solution methods are developed to help estimate passenger demand, which is a necessary input both for resolving conflicts, and for creating efficient timetables. Future capacity allocation in deregulated markets may include solution methods from this thesis. However, further experimentations are still required to address concerns such as data, legislation and acceptability. Moreover, future works can include prototyping and pilot projects on the proposed solutions, and investigating legal and digitalisation strategies to facilitate the implementation of such solutions. Med ökande utmaningar har järnvägar runt om i Europa genomgått stora reformer som syftar till att förbättra järnvägssektorns effektivitet och konkurrenskraft. Nya marknadsstrukturer såsom vertikal separering, avreglering och öppet tillträde för flera operatörer kan möjliggöra minskade offentliga kostnader, ökad marknadskonkurrens och effektivare järnvägssystem. Denna omreglering av järnvägsmarknaderna har dock skapat nya utmaningar för hanteringen av järnvägsinfrastruktur och drift. Tilldelning av järnvägskapacitet, vilket tidigare sköttes inom nationella monopolföretag, måste nu göras av en infrastrukturförvaltare (infrastructure manager). Förvaltarens kapacitetstilldelning till olika (ofta konkurrerande) licensierade järnvägsföretag (railway undertakings) måste samtidigt vara transparent, rättvis och leda till ett effektivt kapacitetsutnyttjande. I denna avhandling utvecklas metoder som kan användas av en infrastrukturförvaltare för att tilldela kapacitet i en avreglerad järnvägsmarknad. Den fokuserar på samhällsekonomiskt effektiva utfall men även transparens, tydlighet och rättvisa. Avhandlingens bidrag omfattar samhällsekonomiska analysmetoder som gör det möjligt för regionala kollektivtrafikmyndigheter att bedöma den samhällsekonomiska effektiviteten för deras trafikering och skapa ett effektivt utbud. Med dessa metoder som utgångspunkt beskrivs en marknadsbaserad och transparent tilldelningsprocess för kapacitet där infrastrukturförvaltare prissätter kommersiella tåglägen för att lösa kapacitetskonflikter med offentligt kontrollerad trafik. Dessutom utvecklas optimeringsmetoder för att estimera passagerarefterfrågan och för att skapa effektiva tågtidtabeller. Framtida kapacitetstilldelning på avreglerade marknader kan inkludera lösningsmetoder från denna avhandling. Ytterligare experiment krävs dock fortfarande för att hantera problem såsom data, lagstiftning och godtagbarhet. Dessutom kan framtida arbete omfatta prototyper och pilotprojekt av de föreslagna lösningarna och undersöka lagliga och digitaliseringsstrategier för att underlätta implementeringen av sådana lösningar.

Sustainable Railway Futures

Sustainable Railway Futures
Author: Becky P.Y. Loo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317047702

Revitalizing railways as a major sustainable transport mode in modern societies faces many issues and challenges. This in-depth overview places the importance of railways in the wider context of comprehensive sustainability, which encompasses sustainable development, social and economic equity and community livability. Some scholars have described the 21st century as a period of renaissance for railways and suggest this transport mode can fulfil people's desire for high mobility with low negative environmental, social, economic and financial impacts. In light of these new expectations for railways, in both passenger and freight transport worldwide, this book offers the latest research insights on the renewed interest about railway expansions and their wide-ranging environmental, socio-economic and even political implications.

Computers in Railways XIII

Computers in Railways XIII
Author: C. A. Brebbia
Publisher: WIT Press
Total Pages: 781
Release: 2013
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1845646169

Containing the proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Design and Operation in Railway Engineering, this book presents the latest developments in the use of computer-based techniques in the design and operation of railways. The COMPRAIL conference series serves as the forum for major advances in this important field. The book covers such topics as Advanced Train Control; Planning; Timetable Planning; Rescheduling; Risk Management; Safety and Security; Maglev and High-speed Railways; Traffic Control and Safety of High-speed Railways; Metro and Other Transit Systems; Communications and Signalling; Energy Supply and Consumption; Driverless and Automatic Train Operation; Operations Quality; Computer Techniques and Simulations; Railway Vehicle Dynamics; Dynamics and Wheel/Rail Interface; Monitoring and Maintenance; Crack, Damage and Fatigue Problems.The book will be of interest to railway managers, consultants, railway engineers (including signal and control engineers), designers of advanced train control systems and computer specialists

The Transport System and Transport Policy

The Transport System and Transport Policy
Author: Bert van Wee
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2023-08-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1802206779

This extensively updated textbook introduces the transport system and its societal impacts in a holistic and multidisciplinary way. A timely second edition, it includes new analyses of travel behaviour and the transport system’s impacts on health and well-being.

Handbook of Spectrum Auction Design

Handbook of Spectrum Auction Design
Author: Martin Bichler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 935
Release: 2017-10-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107135346

An international team of experts covers the pros and cons of different auction formats and lessons learned in the field.

Railway Track Allocation

Railway Track Allocation
Author: Thomas Schlechte
Publisher: Sudwestdeutscher Verlag Fur Hochschulschriften AG
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2012-03
Genre:
ISBN: 9783838132228

This thesis is about mathematical optimization for the efficient use of railway infrastructure. We address the optimal allocation of the available railway track capacity - the track allocation problem. This track allocation problem is a major challenge for a railway company, independent of whether a free market, a private monopoly, or a public monopoly is given. Planning and operating railway transportation systems is extremely hard due to the combinatorial complexity of the underlying discrete optimization problems, the technical intricacies, and the immense sizes of the problem instances. Mathematical models and optimization techniques can result in huge gains for both railway customers and operators, e.g., in terms of cost reductions or service quality improvements. We tackle this challenge by developing novel mathematical models and associated innovative algorithmic solution methods for large scale instances. This allows us to produce for the first time reliable solutions for a real world instance, i.e., the Simplon corridor in Switzerland.

Concurrent planning of railway maintenance windows and train services

Concurrent planning of railway maintenance windows and train services
Author: Tomas Lidén
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2018-11-05
Genre:
ISBN: 9176852016

Efficiency in public and freight transportation systems is of great importance for a society. Railways can other high capacity and relatively low environmental impact, but require that several technical systems are tuned and operate well. Specifically there is a tight interdependency between infrastructure and trains. The consequences are that all subsystems must be maintained and that the coordination of infrastructure activities and train operations is essential. Railway infrastructure maintenance and train services should ideally be planned together, but practice and research about railway scheduling has historically focused mainly on train operations and timetabling while maintenance planning has received less attention | and little research have considered the joint scheduling of both types of activities. Instead the traditional approach has been a sequential and iterative planning procedure, where train timetabling often has precedence over infrastructure maintenance. This thesis studies how maintenance windows, which are regular time windows reserved for maintenance work, can be dimensioned and jointly scheduled with train services in a balanced and efficient way for both maintenance contractors and train operators. Mathematical methods are used, with the aim of advancing the knowledge about quantitative methods for solving such coordination problems. The thesis contributes with new optimization models that jointly schedule maintenance windows and train services, investigates the solving efficiency of these models, and studies crucial extensions of the planning problem | primarily for the consideration of maintenance resources. Furthermore, the models are applied to, verified and validated on a demanding real-life problem instance. The main results are that integrated and optimal scheduling of maintenance windows and train services is viable for problems of practical size and importance, and that substantial maintenance cost savings can be achieved with such an integrated approach as compared to a traditional sequential planning process. The thesis consists of an introduction and overview of the research, followed by six papers which present: (1) A cost benefit model for assessment of competing capacity requests at a single location; (2) An optimization model for integrated scheduling of both maintenance windows and train services; (3) Mathematical reformulations that strengthen the optimization model; (4) Extensions for handling resource considerations and cyclic schedules; (5) A case study for a major single track line in Sweden; and (6) A mathematical study of length-restricted sequences under cyclic conditions.

Electricity Auctions

Electricity Auctions
Author: Luiz Maurer
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2011-07-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 082138824X

Electricity-contract auctions have been getting increased attention as they have emerged as a successful mechanism to procure new generation capacity and. This book presents a comprehensive overview of international experiences in auction design and implementation.