European Railway Companies Research Articles

Внедрение цифровых решений в систему интермодальных грузоперевозок

Purpose: To justify the use of a digital platform at organization of rail freight transportation, allowing to minimize transportation costs, delivery time, time loss at all stages of lifecycle and to simplify significantly the access to infrastructure facilities. The given study confirms that the introduction of advanced digital technologies into intermodal freight transportation system contributes to the effective interaction between railway companies, seaports and regulatory authorities. Methods: Analytical methods of reporting data of Asian and European railway companies — members of International Railway Union, Russian and foreign forwarding companies as well as data of Russia Federal Customs Service and foreign customs authorities are used. Results: The procedure for documentation electronic processing, using mobile workstations, is systematized, the effects from creation of pilot freight transportation are determined, the importance of the expansion of digital environment of trust between participants in intermodal freight transportation — railway companies, seaports and regulatory authorities — is substantiated. Practical importance: The obtained results have an applied character since they propose and justify a number of measures aimed at stirring up of electronic interaction of cargo transportation process participants.

European railway operators’ experience in managing the dependability and safety of technical assets using advanced digital technologies

Abstract. The Aim of the paper is to analyze and examine the experience of the railway companies of the European Union in designing technical asset management systems based on advanced digital technologies. Railway companies are interested in the development of efficient maintenance and repair strategies that allow increasing the volume of traffic with a high level of safety and reliability using the Big Data produced by diagnostic systems. Methods. A comparative analysis of the best practices by European railway companies was performed, the employed digital technologies were compared, and the best known and commercially available software solutions for constructing an asset management system were reviewed. Findings/ Conclusions . Railway companies will have to make a lot of effort in order to not let the vast current expenditures associated with the digitization go to waste, since the deployment of new technology will meet the resistance of the existing system of management and allocation of responsibilities between levels of management within a company. The generic architecture of the European asset management information framework is a highly diverse range of IT solutions, which is a great challenge, as any modification to the operation of the software system requires significant time, managerial and financial resources. In this context, most successful are the companies that have invested in the development of own digital asset management frameworks.

Digitization in Rail Transport

Digital transformation in the railway industry is an important element in the development of railways and should benefit commuters, railway operators, infrastructure managers and rolling stock manufacturers. The process of digitization applies to two domains, i.e. customer service and railway companies’ operation. This paper aims to present previous eff orts regarding the use of digital technologies in customer relations and in the field of operations and maintenance, which translates into the quality of services provided. This paper highlights important concepts of this domain with respect to passenger and freight transport, infrastructure, railway rolling stock and railway traffic management. It is also argued that the process of digitization needs properly trained staff . Examples of innovative initiatives of Polish and European railway companies are covered. Keywords: railway transport, digitization, digitization of the railways

Measuring Firms’ Input Congestion with Consideration of Environmental Factors: The Case of European Railway Transport

In practice, input congestion effects appear in railway transport due to the difficulties of disposing of unnecessary input factors. This study measures the output-oriented technical efficiency and input congestion with consideration of categorical variables for railway transport by using the DEA extension approach. The empirical results from 24 European railway companies show that in 12 railways, the presence of weak congestion can be proved. Based on the results of identifying the source(s) of input congestion and further determining its amount, one can obtain more insights into railways’ operation and thus propose more effective strategies for improvement.

Single-Car Routing in Rail Freight Transport

Single cars in rail freight service are bundled into trains at classification yards. On the way from their respective origins via intermediate yards to their destinations, they are reclassified several times, which is a time-consuming and personally consuming procedure. The single-car routing problem asks for the design of such routes for a given set of orders (origin-destination pairs with associated data) on an infrastructure network, such that the number of trains and their travel distances are minimal. A number of hard restrictions must be obeyed, such as restrictions for the train length and weight, and capacity restrictions for the yards, as well as further operational rules. We present a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation for this car-routing problem arising at Deutsche Bahn, one of the largest European railway companies. In a further step, we refine the handling of the turnover waiting time for the cars in the yards, which leads to the inclusion of nonlinear constraints in the model. Using adequate linearization techniques, this model can be reduced to a MILP again. Instances of this model turn out to be hard to solve. Further techniques are thus presented to speed up the numerical solution process, among them a tree-based reformulation and heuristic cuts. The different model formulations are computationally compared on a test set of randomly generated instances whose sizes are comparable to real-world instances. Using state-of-the-art MILP solvers, optimal or near-optimal solutions can be computed within a reasonable time frame.

An assessment of the performance of the European long intermodal freight trains (LIFTS)

Intermodal rail/road freight transport has always been considered as a competitive alternative to its road freight counterpart in the European medium- to long-distance corridors (markets). Such consideration has been based on the increasing competitiveness of some innovative rail services and the existing and prospective performance of both modes in terms of the full social – internal or operational and external – costs. The most recent innovation of rail technologies and related services launched by some European railway companies, still at the conceptual level, is the Long Intermodal Freight Train (LIFT). This is supposed to be a block train operating in long-distance corridors (markets) with a substantial and regular freight demand. This paper develops analytical models for assessing the performance of the LIFTs, the already-operating Conventional Intermodal Freight Trains (CIFTs), and their road counterpart as well. The performance consists of the full – internal (private) and external – costs of the door-to-door delivery of loading units – containers, swap-bodies, and semi-trailers. The internal costs embrace the operational costs of the transport (rail and road) and intermodal terminal operators. The external costs include the costs of the impacts of door-to-door delivery of loading units on society and the environment. These negative externalities include noise, air pollution, traffic accidents, and congestion. The models are applied to a simplified version of intermodal and road transport system using inputs from the European freight transport sector. The aims are to compare the full costs of particular modalities in order to investigate the potential of the LIFTs as compared with the CIFTs in improving the internal efficiency of the rail freight sector and its competitiveness with respect to its road counterpart. In addition, the paper attempts to assess some effects on the potential modal shift of EU (European Union) transport policies on internalizing transport externalities.

Applying Low-Cost Airline Pricing Strategies to European Railroads

European railroads must reduce costs and increase revenues if they are to remain successful during the coming years. This is especially true as intermodal competition, for example, from low-cost airlines (LCAs) increases, but also because of the coming intramodal competition, as new companies will be free to offer passenger rail service throughout the European network. Many strategies that railroads might use to achieve these objectives can be modeled after the LCA industry, which is pioneering implementation of innovative and creative business concepts in the transportation industry. European railway companies have used two approaches to address competition: applying pricing strategies to their regular networks and organizing subsidiary companies to offer new services. It has been difficult to introduce yield management strategies on regular service because of the structure of railway networks. Deutsche Bahn tried an ambitious program called PEP in 2003. The PEP program created customer confusion and revenue losses for the railroad; it was replaced with a new approach after several months. More recently, railroads have introduced yield pricing on a small number of specific trains. France and Italy have established separate affiliates to test new marketing strategies and service concepts. Both programs have been successful. Application of LCA pricing strategies to European railroads is described. Experience has shown that successfully transferring these strategies to the railroad business has not been simple, but as intermodal and intramodal competition continues to increase, European railroads must become more innovative.

Toolbox with Nondestructive Testing Methods for Condition Assessment of Railway Bridges

The unified economic structure of the European market requires a unified transport infrastructure to ensure seamless and barrier-free transportation of passengers and goods. The European Commission has been funding the European Integrated Project, Sustainable Bridges, to comply with future traffic demands. The main objective of the project is to assess reliably and upgrade the bridge infrastructure for the required increase of axle loads and transport volume. Thirty-two institutes from 12 countries have developed unified procedures for the assessment and improvement of the existing railway bridge stock under the guidance and review of six major European railway companies. Nondestructive testing (NDT) has been given a high priority. One of the work packages concentrates on the potential of advanced NDT methods and creates a toolbox with advisable methods for the condition assessment of all types of railway bridges. Although NDT methods are implemented in the quality assurance process in many industries, their application in the railway infrastructure is not common. Only a few countries have included selected NDT methods in their advanced condition assessment procedures for the management of their bridge stock. This paper describes current activities to enhance pulse-phase thermography, impulse radar, and acoustic methods. The advanced methods enable infrastructure owners to verify construction plans; assess structures, repair, and strengthening quality; or identify in-service damages. An automated scanning system for combined acoustic and electromagnetic measurements has been developed recently. The results can be combined through data fusion techniques to increase their value for the bridge owners.

Toolbox with Nondestructive Testing Methods for Condition Assessment of Railway Bridges

The unified economic structure of the European market requires a unified transport infrastructure to ensure seamless and barrier-free transportation of passengers and goods. The European Commission has been funding the European Integrated Project, Sustainable Bridges, to comply with future traffic demands. The main objective of the project is to assess reliably and upgrade the bridge infrastructure for the required increase of axle loads and transport volume. Thirty-two institutes from 12 countries have developed unified procedures for the assessment and improvement of the existing railway bridge stock under the guidance and review of six major European railway companies. Nondestructive testing (NDT) has been given a high priority. One of the work packages concentrates on the potential of advanced NDT methods and creates a toolbox with advisable methods for the condition assessment of all types of railway bridges. Although NDT methods are implemented in the quality assurance process in many industries, their application in the railway infrastructure is not common. Only a few countries have included selected NDT methods in their advanced condition assessment procedures for the management of their bridge stock. This paper describes current activities to enhance pulse-phase thermography, impulse radar, and acoustic methods. The advanced methods enable infrastructure owners to verify construction plans; assess structures, repair, and strengthening quality; or identify in-service damages. An automated scanning system for combined acoustic and electromagnetic measurements has been developed recently. The results can be combined through data fusion techniques to increase their value for the bridge owners.

A DYNAMIC APPROACH FOR PLANNING PREVENTIVE RAILWAY MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES

This paper provides some useful methods for finding optimal track possession intervals for carrying out preventive maintenance works. The objective is to minimize the inconvenience fro the train operators and the infrastructure possession time. In these models the train free periods are mostly used for this purpose, name the hours between two consecutive train operations. This approach can be useful for some European railway companies for carrying out preventive maintenance works.

COST AND REVENUE INEFFICIENCIES IN THE EUROPEAN RAILWAYS

This study analyses cost and revenue inefficiencies for a sample of European railway companies. On the basis of a DEA model we calculate cost and revenue inefficiencies, decomposing them into inefficiencies of a technical or allocative type. It is observed that inefficiencies in revenues are greater than those in costs, indicating that the study of inefficiencies in costs is only a partial analysis of the problem. Also, technical inefficiencies are greater than the allocative type. Finally, the most independent companies, with least external intervention in their decisions, are also the most efficient in both costs and revenue.

Measuring of production efficiency in the European railways

Throughout this research, efficiency levels of the European railway industry are analyzed using non‐parametric methods. A sample of 21 companies is used, in the timeframe of 1984‐1995. The aim of the paper is the analysis of the influence on these firms’ efficiency of organizational change due to their adaptation to the environment in which they operate. This environment has been modified as a consequence of the EU directive 91/440/CEE, which mandates the split of the organizational structure of railway companies in two: operation and infrastructure. Results of this paper state clearly that a major part of the technical efficiency of European railway companies is a consequence of scale inefficiencies. In other words, due to mistakes in the size election. Besides, we have proved that technically efficient companies are those of small size. As a conclusion, we should recommend smaller sizes for the big European railway companies, if they are to improve their technical efficiency.

Financial relations between European railways for their international services

The operations of European railway companies are generally confined to the territory of one country. Each company incurs the cost of operations on its network. For international trains there are systems of physical compensation for vehicles and staff operating outside their home network. Revenues either go direct to each company involved, or, in the case of through international rates, are apportioned according to distance. This situation implies that for any decision on price and services agreement of all operators involved is necessary. Also, the apportionment of costs between operators is not in line with real cost structure. With further integration in the European community, and freer movement between Eastern and Western Europe, international transport will become more important, and railways will be at a disadvantage compared with other modes that can operate international services throughout. An organisation is proposed and illustrated with some examples, wherein separate commercial units are formed responsible for running and marketing an international rail service. Track, vehicles, and staff of national railway companiew may be used as now, but at a price to be agreed, and without the need for physical compensation.