Strategic forecasting of complex production system - railway transport

Abstract

The paper considers conditions and methods for developing a strategic forecast for the technical and economic state of the worldwide and Russian railway transport for a period of 30-50 years or more. The analysis was made on changes in the state of infrastructure, rolling stock, organization of train traffic and shunting work, nature of the management of the transportation process from 1825 to the present. It is established that many quantitative and qualitative indicators of its technical and technological state have improved during this period many times and by orders of magnitude. This allowed the railway transport to ensure a high level of competitiveness in the transport system of the world, including our country, despite the emergence of all new modes of transport. At the same time, some such indicators are now close to the maximum possible and will not be able to grow rapidly in the future. It is accepted that in the development of strategic fore-casts of the technical and technological state of complex (large) production systems, it is necessary to determine the most important parameters, which in the long term can be improved many times substantially, which in the complex system under consideration will achieve a significant reduction in costs, and even increase their competitiveness. The main trends in the development of railways for a strategic long-term period are determined, taking into account the support of the development of its technical and technological state for the achievements of fundamental and branch science. These trends take into account both known solutions, for example, HS operation and new solutions. The implementation of the proposals will allow the railways to achieve a reduction in unit costs (per unit of transport output), preserve and increase their competitiveness in the constantly developing transport market.