Technical Papers
Aug 22, 2012

Comparison of Vertical Alignments for Rail Transit

Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 139, Issue 2

Abstract

In this paper two vertical alignment profiles (labeled dipped and undipped) connecting rail transit stations with different elevations are compared. A deterministic simulation model is developed and used to analyze train motion and energy use for three different vertical alignments. To minimize the cost of rail transit operation for both directions, cruising speed is optimized as a decision variable while train operations are simulated on the proposed vertical alignments. The numerical analysis and sensitivity studies show that the developed deterministic simulation model is useful for comparing vertical alignments, and that the proposed alignment concepts can significantly reduce travel time, energy use, brake wear, operating cost, and total cost compared with the baseline alignment profile.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the University of Incheon (International Cooperative) Research Grant in 2011.

References

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Information

Published In

Go to Journal of Transportation Engineering
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 139Issue 2February 2013
Pages: 230 - 238

History

Received: Feb 27, 2012
Accepted: Jun 19, 2012
Published online: Aug 22, 2012
Published in print: Feb 1, 2013

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Authors

Affiliations

Myungseob (Edward) Kim [email protected]
Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. E-mail: [email protected]
Paul Schonfeld [email protected]
F.ASCE
Professor, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. E-mail: [email protected]
Eungcheol Kim [email protected]
Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Univ. of Incheon, Incheon 406-772, South Korea (corresponding author). E-mail: [email protected]

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