An assessment of railway capacity

Abstract

In this paper, we review the main concepts and methods to perform capacity analyses, and we present an automated tool that is able to perform several capacity analyses. Capacity is extremely dependent on infrastructure, traffic, and operating parameters. Therefore, an in-depth study of the main factors that influence railway capacity is performed on several Spanish railway infrastructures. The results show how the capacity varies according to factors such as train speed, commercial stops, train heterogeneity, distance between railway signals, and timetable robustness.