Exploring Different Alert Limit Strategies in the Maintenance of Railway Track Geometry
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 142, Issue 9
Abstract
This paper explores a quantitative model with different maintenance strategies to control railway track geometry degradation in Portugal. The alert limits put forward by the international standards are assessed regarding the planned and unplanned impacts associated with those limits, namely preventive maintenance and renewal costs, corrective maintenance costs, planned infrastructure delays due to changes in the maximum permissible speed, and unplanned infrastructure delays due to temporary speed restrictions. The effects of different choices for the alert limits of the main quality indicators for railway track geometry are assessed, considering a cost penalty due to delays set by the regulatory entity. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is conducted on the effect of this delay cost penalty on the optimized choice of the alert limits for both quality indicators.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the support and collaboration of the Portuguese Railway Infrastructure Manager, REFER, and the financial support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the project MODURAIL (PTDC/SEN-TRA/112975/2009) and MIT Portugal program through the Ph.D. grant (SFRH/BD/33785/2009). They also thank the suggestions from three reviewers, which definitely improved this work.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 9 • September 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 8, 2014
Accepted: Feb 29, 2016
Published online: Apr 29, 2016
Published in print: Sep 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Sep 29, 2016
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