Comprehensive Decision Support Framework for Strategic Railway Capacity Planning
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 137, Issue 10
Abstract
The potential growth of railway traffic is expected to be substantial worldwide; hence, railway companies and agencies are looking for better tools to allocate their capital investments to capacity planning in the best possible way. This paper presents a comprehensive decision support framework with three stand-alone tools for strategic railway capacity planning: (1) “Alternatives Generator,” which enumerates the possible expansion options along with their cost and capacity effects; (2) “Investment Selection Model,” which determines the portions of the network that need to be upgraded with certain capacity improvement alternatives; and (3) “Impact Analysis Module,” which evaluates the trade-off between capital investment and delay cost. This research also developed and implemented a specific decision support framework for North American class 1 railroads. On the basis of the network characteristics, estimated future demand, and available budget, this decision support framework can successfully determine the optimal investment plan. This tool can significantly help railroads maximize the return on investment from capacity expansion projects, thus enhancing their ability to provide reliable service to customers.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Mr. Harald Krueger at CN Railway, and Mr. Jeremiah Dirnberger and Mr. Don Hemminger at Canadian Pacific Railway for their assistance on this project. A portion of the first author's graduate study support has been from a CN Railroad Engineering Research Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 137 • Issue 10 • October 2011
Pages: 738 - 749
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 26, 2010
Accepted: Nov 1, 2010
Published online: Sep 15, 2011
Published in print: Oct 1, 2011
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