Engineering of an electric train for the first phase of the high-speed railway network in Russia

On December 2, 2024, on the 215th anniversary of the foundation of Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University (PGUPS), the Sixth Betancourt International Engineering Forum was held. For many years, it has been held on this date which is a big day for the country’s first transport university. Traditionally, participants of these scientific and engineering meetings discuss current issues in the development of transport and engineering education. In 2024, the forum organizers — the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, the Federal Agency for Railway Transport, Russian Railways, and Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University — proposed the topic “High-speed railway line St. Petersburg–Moscow: Challenges, solutions, personnel”.

On December 2, 2024, on the 215th anniversary of the foundation of the Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University (PSTU), the 6th Betancourt International Engineering Forum was held. For many years, it has been held on this signifi cant day for the country’s fi rst transport university. Traditionally, at these scientifi c and engineering meetings, participants discuss current issues related to the development of transport and engineering education. In 2024, the forum organizers — the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, the Federal Agency for Railway Transport, Russian Railways, and the Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University — proposed the topic “High-speed railway line St. Petersburg – Moscow: challenges, solutions, personnel”.

This paper develops a multi-objective optimization model for national high-speed railway network planning. Three objectives are proposed from the macro, meso, and micro perspectives, and these three objectives are considered simultaneously. Using real data, case studies are conducted to optimize China’s “four east–west and four north–south railway lines” network, which includes Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Zhengzhou as main hubs. The results show that, on the one hand, the optimization model reduces the overlap between long-distance passengers and short-distance passengers on the high-speed railway line, facilitates the travel of passengers, and improves the line service capability; on the other hand, optimization of the network shortens the travel time of the passengers, reduces the cost of the railway, and improves the operation efficiency of the high-speed railway line network. The results show that the total travel time of all high-speed railway passengers in the optimization model is reduced by 18.4%, while the benefit rate of the operator increased by 21.99%.

Reevaluation of Japanese high-speed rail construction: Recent situation of the north corridor Shinkansen and its way to completion

One of the major objectives of the African Union (AU) is to develop an integrated high-speed railway network connecting major African cities for improved continental trade and competition. This paper provides an overview of the main technical aspects of high-speed railway lines with special focus on cross-border operational and technical interoperability. It briefly describes the missing link in realizing a truly interoperable high-speed railway network for the African case. It introduces the technical aspects of railway lines that must be unified for cross-border operation. It also outlines the reasons that may explain the global success of the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS), offering the author’s view on factors that continue to influence decision making in favor of ERTMS over other national and not interoperable solutions such as the Chinese Train Control System (CTCS). The paper concludes by suggesting the way forward for combined continental effort to realize the African Integrated High-Speed Railway Lines Network as part of the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

Abstract. In the past few decades, high-speed railways have become an important transportation system due to their high operational speed, and globally, the networks of these railways have been extended. In addition, there is ongoing work on the construction of new high-speed railways as well as improving existing lines to achieve the same operational speed. To contribute to high-speed railway works in Turkey, this study compared two high-speed railway lines; an existing conventional line, the design of which was improved, and a new high-speed line. The design of an existing conventional railway line was improved according to optimal geometric characteristics of high-speed railways and an alternative line was simulated. These two lines were evaluated on three different types of land in terms of the required volume of earthworks, engineering structures and total cost. The results show that the length of the conventional line was reduced after the improvement process; however, new engineering structures are needed. Furthermore, compared to the alternative line, the track length and total length of engineering structures required for the improvement of the existing line was shorter and the volume of required earthworks was less resulting in lower costs.

China has suffered railway capacity constraints for more than several decades and the need for a large increase in rail capacity has been viewed as the primary challenge. The former Chinese Ministry of Railways believed that building a national wide high speed railway (HSR) network was the most efficient solution to China’s rail capacity problems. By 2012, 9 000 km of HSR line has been completed which accounted more than half of the total in the World and the other 9 000 km HSR line is either under construction or in the planning stage. This paper attempts to discuss the initial operational, financial and economic result of such a large scale HSR investment in China where the establishment of an appraisal system for a HSR project is still underway and the public data in need are not available. Based on some trial studies carried out on several HSR projects, however, the paper shows that except for a limited amount of HSR projects in the most developed areas of the country, the initial financial and economic performance of most HSR lines are generally much poorer than expected. The scale of investment seems to be difficult to justify, given that investment in HSR lines is very expensive, especially for those with design speed of 350 km/h, and the high level of debt funding. Moreover the values of time of the ordinary Chinese are still low by European standards. For a developing country planning HSR projects, one lesson that can be learnt from China is that it would be ideal if a comprehensive appraisal can be taken into account before investing in HSR. Such appraisal includes examination of different options for technical and operational standards, timing of investment, construction scale and pace, train operational scheme and service level, pricing and regional development policy (political consideration). At the very least, a step by step development strategy should be adopted to cope with the huge uncertainties and risks.

China has suffered railway capacity constraints for more than several decades and the need for a large increase in rail capacity has been viewed as the primary challenge. The former Chinese Ministry of Railways believed that building a national wide high speed railway (HSR) network was the most efficient solution to China’s rail capacity problems. By 2012, 9 000 km of HSR line has been completed which accounted more than half of the total in the World and the other 9 000 km HSR line is either under construction or in the planning stage. This paper attempts to discuss the initial operational, financial and economic result of such a large scale HSR investment in China where the establishment of an appraisal system for a HSR project is still underway and the public data in need are not available. Based on some trial studies carried out on several HSR projects, however, the paper shows that except for a limited amount of HSR projects in the most developed areas of the country, the initial financial and economic performance of most HSR lines are generally much poorer than expected. The scale of investment seems to be difficult to justify, given that investment in HSR lines is very expensive, especially for those with design speed of 350 km/h, and the high level of debt funding. Moreover the values of time of the ordinary Chinese are still low by European standards. For a developing country planning HSR projects, one lesson that can be learnt from China is that it would be ideal if a comprehensive appraisal can be taken into account before investing in HSR. Such appraisal includes examination of different options for technical and operational standards, timing of investment, construction scale and pace, train operational scheme and service level, pricing and regional development policy (political consideration). At the very least, a step by step development strategy should be adopted to cope with the huge uncertainties and risks.

Purpose: To find main conceptions of the development of high-speed lines in the world, to outline leading countries in the sphere of high-speed railway network construction, to track high-speed railway network construction dynamics, to compare the shares of high-speed railways by individual continents and countries, to define Russia’s place in the sphere of high-speed transport, to outline individual country and continent perspectives for new high-speed line construction and new technology application during construction of the lines in the next decade. Methods: Comparison of construction scales for the outlined high-speed lines by individual countries, graphical analysis of high-speed network growth dynamics in five the most developed by this matter countries. Results: Leading countries in the sphere of high-speed transport network construction are distinguished, relevant values for volumes of existing high-speed network in the world different parts and some countries are presented, a classification of Russia passenger trains depending on the motion speed is given, specificities of organization of high-speed communication in our country are outlined, plans for new high-speed line construction in China, Russia and other countries are expounded, statistical data on high-speed railway spread in the world countries and by individual continents are presented, high-speed network construction dynamics in China, Japan and leading by this matter Europe countries is shown. Practical significance: The given article can serve as a basis for an acquaintance with a relevant status on the matter of existing high-speed railway transport networks, major countries are outlined herein which experience can be taken while creation of high-speed lines in Russia and being based on demonstrated graphical materials, it’s eventual to evaluate real perspectives by the volume of construction of high-speed network nowdays.

Analytical evaluation of lateral rail unevenness on high-speed railway bridge after transversal seismic shaking

A non-linear regression model is proposed to forecast the aggregated passenger volume of Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway (HSR) line in China. Train services and temporal features of passenger volume are studied to have a prior knowledge about this high-speed railway line. Then, based on a theoretical curve that depicts the relationship among passenger demand, transportation capacity and passenger volume, a non-linear regression model is established with consideration of the effect of capacity constraint. Through experiments, it is found that the proposed model can perform better in both forecasting accuracy and stability compared with linear regression models and back-propagation neural networks. In addition to the forecasting ability, with a definite formation, the proposed model can be further used to forecast the effects of train planning policies.

We address the train rescheduling optimization problem with considering train control of High-Speed Railway (HSR) line under a quasi-moving block system when the disruptions occur during HSR operations. In this paper, we focus on disruptions caused by adverse weather events which lead to Temporary Speed Restrictions (TSR) at geographical area influenced. This paper develops a mixed integer linear programming model to solve the integrated optimization problem for minimizing train delays. The proposed model considers the calculation of the detailed current End of Movement Authority (EOA) of a train. Moreover, the variable safety headway times of the trains could be obtained according to the current EOA and braking distances, rather than a fixed quantity. Computational experiments are conducted based on a high-speed railway line in China to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed optimization model can achieve the better train operations (i.e., fewer train delays) in comparison to the model only focusing on train rescheduling or the model without considering the calculation of current EOA.

With the continuous construction of high-speed railway networks in China, long-span railway bridges which carry multiple tracks are being put into service on the high-speed railway line. Ho...

Based on the complex network theory, a non-Markov higher-order network model is used to abstract China’s high-speed railway system into a higher-order high-speed railway network (HHRN), and its community structure and node importance are analyzed. The results of community division show that the spatial distribution of high-speed railway communities is mainly affected by geographical location and high-speed railway trunk lines. There is an overlap between different communities, and some nodes belong to multiple communities at the same time. Node importance analysis results show that the distribution of important nodes has obvious regional characteristics; comparing the results of community division, it is found that important nodes basically belong to multiple communities, while non-important nodes mostly belong to a single community. Based on the results of these studies, some suggestions are given for the optimization of China’s high-speed railway development.KeywordsHigher-order high-speed railway networkHigher-order network modelCommunity structureNode importance analysisComplex network

Recently, the development of high-speed railway meets the requirement of society booming and it has gradually become the first choice for long-length journey. Since ensuring the safety and stable operation are of great importance to high-speed trains owing to its unique features, vibration analysis checking is one of main means to be adopted. Due to the popularization of Smartphone, in this research, a novel public-participating method to achieve high-speed railway’s vibration analysis checking based on smartphone and an inspection application of high-speed railway line built in the intelligent mobile terminal were proposed. Utilizing the accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS and other high-performance sensors which were integrated in smartphone, the application can obtain multiple parameters like acceleration, angle, etc and pinpoint the location. Therefore, through analyzing the acceleration data in time domain and frequency domain using fast Fourier transform, the research compared much of data from monitoring tests under different measure conditions and measuring points. Furthermore, an idea of establishing a system about analysis checking was outlined in paper. It has been validated that the smartphone-based high-speed railway line inspection system is reliable and feasible on the high-speed railway lines. And it has more advantages, such as convenience, low cost and being widely used. Obviously, the research has important practical significance and broad application prospects.