Rail freight service productivity from the manager's perspective

To be beneficial to management, productivity concepts must be translated into terms that are meaningful to managers at all levels of the organization. Productivity per se is not nearly as important to these people as service quality and financial performance, especially since measured productivity can improve while profits or service levels decline. Productivity must, therefore, be related to an integrated set of performance measures that reflect costs, revenues, trip times and reliability, equipment availability and other matters of continuing concern to transportation companies. Planning and control are critical components of any program to improve productivity. The techniques required to measure and understand productivity are precisely those used in planning and in developing control systems. Furthermore, productivity is conceptually very close to cost analysis, which is a major focus of planning and control. Any transportation company has access to the data needed to develop a vast array of performance measures, including many productivity measures. This paper will illustrate the way that railroads can integrate productivity concepts within more global performance measurement systems. Specific attention will be given to terminal control systems, costing systems for origin-to-destination movements and life-cycle costing techniques for track maintenance planning.     

Level crossing safety on East Japan Railway Company: Application of probabilistic risk assessment techniques

This paper describes the application of probabilistic risk assessment techniques to level crossing safety on JR East, the largest of the six private railroads in Japan. The risk of a level crossing accident was defined as the product of the accident rate and the expected consequences per accident. Rail traffic volume, road traffic volume, visibility of the crossing from the road, road gradient, width of the crossing and the type of safety devices at the crossing were shown to influence the accident rate and the collective risk. The mean accident rate at all crossings was 0.74 per million trains. The accident rate was 0.59 per million trains at crossings equipped with barriers, 1.25 at crossings equipped with warning bells and 0.76 at pedestrian crossings. Crossings equipped with obstacle detectors had a lower accident rate (0.12 per million trains) than crossings without detectors (0.43 per million trains). Crossings with visibility less than 20 m had a 50% higher mean accident rate than crossings with visibility greater than 20 m. As the number of tracks increased, the accident rate monotonically increased due to the increased accident exposure. Risk assessment techniques were applied to determine the efficacy of the various level crossing safety devices. In addition to upgrading the safety of crossings, the management techniques stressed the importance of education campaigns in warning the public about the dangers of illegal crossings.     

An introduction to computer-assisted train dispatch

This paper provides a framework for assessing the progress that is being made in the computer-assisted dispatching of trains. The state of the art is described in general terms, and future research needs are identified.