Classification and Analysis of Elements of Railway Infrastructure Maintenance in Order to Minimize Costs

Abstract

Maintaining the railway infrastructure in a condition ensuring safe railway traffic is the basic responsibility of railway infrastructure managers resulting from the Rail Transport Act. Elements of the railway infrastructure are subject to difficult atmospheric conditions as well as changing dynamic loads resulting from the operation of a given part of the infrastructure. The lack of proper maintenance of tracks adversely affects their operation: lowering the permissible speed, reducing driving calm, decreasing the safety of railway traffic, increasing the degradation of aggregate and railway subgrade, as well as increasing the influence of dynamic impacts on the surrounding buildings. The following article presents an analysis of maintenance tasks performed at 5 different locations. For the purposes of the article, data were collected in 2016−2018 on 100 km of track from daily reports performed by qualified supervisors managing maintenance brigades. The aim of the article is to present the results of the collected data, to analyze the most common maintenance tasks, to determine the root causes that result in the need to perform specific tasks and to propose remedies. The aim of the research was to achieve market competitiveness by minimizing costs because today’s performance of duties related to the maintenance of railway infrastructure is characterized by very high costs associated with high workload, repair technology, the need to use specialized equipment, and temporarily exclude a part of the line from traffic. The research was carried out in a company which is a manager of railway infrastructure. Keywords: maintenance, railway infrastructure, railway infrastructure manager, costs