Railway Passenger Service Research Articles

Towards Double-Layer Dynamic Heterogeneous Redundancy Architecture for Reliable Railway Passenger Service System

Researchers have proposed the dynamic heterogeneous redundancy (DHR) architecture, which integrates dynamic, heterogeneous, redundant, and closed-loop feedback elements into the system, to fortify the reliability of the railway passenger service system (RPSS). However, there are at least two weaknesses with the common DHR architectures: (1) they need system nodes with enough computing and storage resources; (2) they have hardly considered the reliability of DHR architecture. To this end, this paper proposes a double-layer DHR (DDHR) architecture to ensure the reliability of RPSS. This architecture introduces a set of algorithms, which are optimized co-computation and ruling weight optimization algorithms for the data processing flow of the DDHR architecture. This set improves the reliability of the DDHR architecture. For the evaluation of the reliability of DDHR architecture, this paper also proposes two metrics: (1) Dynamic available similarity metric. This metric does not rely on the overall similarity of the double-layer redundant executor sets but evaluates the similarity of their performance under the specified interaction paths within a single scheduling cycle. The smaller its similarity, the higher its reliability. (2) Scheduling cycle under dual-layer similarity threshold. This metric evaluates the reliability of the RPSS under actual conditions by setting the schedulable similarity thresholds between the same and different layers of the dual-layer redundant executives in the scheduling process. Finally, analog simulation experiments and prototype system building experiments are carried out, whose numerical experimental results show that the DDHR architecture outperforms the traditional DHR architecture in terms of reliability and performance under different redundancy and dynamically available similarity thresholds, while the algorithmic complexity and multi-tasking concurrency performance are slightly weaker than that of the DHR architecture, but can be applied to the main operations of the RPSS in general.

Assessing Commuter Satisfaction and Operational Efficiency of Local Passenger Railway Services in Tshwane, South Africa

Assessing Commuter Satisfaction and Operational Efficiency of Local Passenger Railway Services in Tshwane, South Africa

Railway contactless checkout process with identification assisted by gait recognition

With business process optimization, technological advancement, equipment capability enhancement, and other means, the Railway Passenger Service Department in China is consistently working to improve the efficiency and convenience of passenger entry and exit procedures at railway stations. Concerning passengers’ checkout, not only conventional identification approaches based on manual control, identification card, and magnetic thermal paper ticket are supported, but also a recent contactless identification process based on face recognition is applied in some stations. To further improve the contactless identification ability for checkout, an advanced contactless checkout process based on gait-augmented face recognition is innovatively put forward, in which a weakly-supervised body segmentation network named Dwsegnet and an improved GaitSet model are proposed. Through comparison with various models, the effectiveness of both Dwsegnet and the improved GaitSet is validated. Specifically, the contactless identification rate of gait-augmented face recognition is improved by 2.31% when compared to single-modal face recognition, which demonstrates the superiority of the proposed process.

Stimulus Perception in Long-Distance Railway Mode Choice

In the context of countries in the so-called Global South, where passenger railway services are either nonexistent or poorly performed, discrete choice models are useful to identify the attributes that affect users’ choices and provide insights on their behaviour in regional long-distance trips. Several theories and models have been proposed to understand travel behaviour for effective strategical decision in the transport field. The well-knownRandom Utility Maximization (RUM) approach has been widely used for such purposes, while the Random Regret Minimization (RRM) approach has been recently explored in the literature. However, the magnitude in the difference of levels of the attributes, or the stimulus perception, may affect the results of such models and biases the estimations. Therefore, this paper aims to assess the stimulus perception in mode choice to compare conventional rail (CR) and high-speed rail (HSR) services for passenger transport in intercity trips in Brazil. Estimations of RUM and RRM models were performed with a dataset from a stated preference survey comparing two railway technologies (CR and HSR) with other modes of transport (car, bus, and airplanes) for long-distance trips in the Southeast region of Brazil. Findings provide useful insights about the impacts of travel costs, travel times, and frequency of services, as well as sociodemographic characteristics of users. From the modelling outputs, it was found that users are affected by the magnitude of travel costs, time, and frequency only in business trips by HSR in the Brazilian context.

Research on Innovative Design of railway passenger service

In order to improve the quality of railway passenger service, the quality of railway passenger service is investigated through field investigation and questionnaire survey, the evaluation index system of railway passenger service quality is established, and the Delphi method is used to screen important service quality evaluation indicators, The model of railway passenger service quality evaluation is established by Delphi method and analytic hierarchy process based on passenger perception, the top five indicators in the weight ranking in the station service quality evaluation index system can show the importance of the station environment in improving the quality of passenger service. On this basis, 1088 valid questionnaires on the addition of lifting stools in station waiting halls were analyzed. The results show that most passengers are concerned about the comfort of the renovated seats and the safety of luggage storage, and the innovative design of the lifting stool greatly improves the space utilization of the waiting hall when improving the railway passenger service.

Bidder asymmetries in procurement auctions: Efficiency vs. information – Evidence from railway passenger services

We estimate a structural model of procurement auctions with private and common value components and asymmetric bidders using detailed contract-level data on the German market for railway passenger services. Exploiting exogenous variation in the procurement design, we disentangle the asymmetries in private costs from asymmetries in information about the common value. While each asymmetry can rationalize a firm’s dominance, understanding its source is crucial for evaluating the auction design as welfare and revenue implications depend on the source of dominance. Our results indicate that the incumbent is slightly more cost-efficient and has substantially more precise information about the common value component. If the bidders’ strategic response to the common value asymmetry were eliminated, the average probability of selecting the efficient firm would increase by 43%-points.

China's railway train speed, density and weight in developing

PurposeThis study aims to analyze the development direction of train speed, density and weight in China.Design/methodology/approachThe development of China's railway in the past 40 years can be divided into 3 stages. At the stage of potential tapping and capacity expansion, it is important to improve the train weight and density by upgrading the existing lines, and improving transportation capacity rapidly. At the stage of railway speed increase, the first priority is to increase train speed, reduce the travel time of passenger train, and synchronously take into account the increase of train density and weight. At the stage of developing high-speed railway, train speed, density and weight are co-developing on demand.FindingsThe train speed of high-speed railway will be 400 km h−1, the interval time of train tracking will be 3 min, and the traffic density will be more than 190 pairs per day. The running speed of high-speed freight EMU will reach 200 km h−1 and above. The maximum speed of passenger train on mixed passenger and freight railway can reach 200 km h−1. The minimum interval time of train tracking can be compressed to 5 min. The freight train weight of 850 m series arrival-departure track railway can be increased to 4,500–5,000 t and that of 1,050 m series to 5,500–6,400 t. EMU trains should gradually replace ordinary passenger trains to improve the quality of railway passenger service. Small formation trains will operate more in intercity railway, suburban railway and short-distance passenger transportation.Originality/valueThe research can provide new connotations and requirements of railway train speed, density and weight in the new railway stage.

A Two-Phase VIKOR Model for Track Layout Evaluation of Passenger Rail Stations

Passenger stations are transit hubs where several railway lines interchange. They have important roles in providing train operations and passenger services. Interrelations between track layouts and technological performances are important for reducing bottleneck effects and raising the operational effectiveness of rail networks. To the best of our knowledge, in previous research the assessment of track layouts has not been considered with respect to various technological aspects including railway operations, safety, and passenger services but rather as a single criterion for analysis of different individual performance indicators. We propose a new two-phase decision making approach for the complex evaluation of track layout alternatives. The first phase model is a VIKOR method for ranking track layouts by criteria related to: railway capacity, safety issue, and passenger-pedestrian fluctuations. Next, in the second phase, we use marginal analysis to find Pareto front and compare the alternatives ratings by calculating performance-benefit coefficients. To show the applicability of the proposed model, we employ an illustrative example of a passenger rail station and evaluate six different track layout alternatives. The effectiveness of the proposed model is demonstrated comparing the proposed two-phase model with traditional VIKOR.

Quo vadis, international long-distance railway services? Evidence from Central Europe

International railway passenger services have seen considerable changes in Europe over the past few decades. Using international railway connections within and reaching outside the V4 countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) in 1990–2019 as a sample, our paper explores trends and patterns in that matter in Central Europe. We have found that the characteristic focus on relatively very frequent short or medium-distance connections using the best equipped railway corridors – paralleled by a considerable reduction of the remaining services – has also been clearly in evidence in this part of the world. However, trends and patterns in Central Europe are not necessarily a mirror image of what has occurred in Western Europe. For instance, although a considerable shortening of travel times has indeed been observed, it has been achieved – characteristically – thanks to the improved permeability of state borders after the enlargement of the EU in 2004, with only moderate improvements to infrastructure being made. Central Europe therefore seems to be the prime example of an area in which contextual, political and geopolitical factors are the keys to understanding the dynamics of changes in transport systems. On the other hand, evidence from this region may give rise to some reflections on the possible roles for the European long-distance rail transport in the future. To begin with, our results show 800 km to be the threshold beyond which the competitive position of rail becomes significantly lower. Secondly, competitive pressure from innovative newcomers (Regiojet, LeoExpress, Arriva) clearly makes national incumbents more flexible and pro-active. Thirdly, the noticeable spatial re-orientation of international railway connections from the V4 countries towards Vienna and Munich (at the expense of Berlin) that we have observed is partly related to the appeal of these cities as multimodal gates with excellent locations within European transport networks. It would therefore seem that the railways in this part of Europe have been attempting to become an integral part of the international multi-modal long-distance transport system.

A Study on Passengers Satisfaction towards Indian Railway Services (With Special Reference to Madurai City)

India is one of the largest countries in terms of geographical size, which requires efficient means for long-distance transportation. Public transport, being the primary mode of transport, remains a powerful yardstick to measure the overall development of a nation. Among the various modes of transport, Railways are one of the biggest modes of passenger transport in the world. The Railway passenger services face long term competitive threats from airlines, luxury buses, personalized transport, and improved public transport. To compete with other modes of transport, it is inevitable for railways to accelerate the growth of passenger’s origination. It is essential for the railway authorities to know the opinion of the passengers regarding the services offered to them to make future policies and provisions. Having this drive in mind, the researchers have undertaken a study about the services provided by the Indian Railways along with its objectives to analyze the passengers’ preferences, satisfaction, limitations, and perceptions towards the same. Every aspect related to railway services like ticket availability, quality of travel, employee behavior, safety, timing, and other relevant aspects is analyzed at different levels of the research. As passenger satisfaction is chosen to be the concept for this research, elements that allow passengers to feel satisfied with offered services are also mentioned in the theoretical part. The scope of this project is limited to passengers of Madurai city.

Rail factor and realism of the unconscious

The paper reviews the spoken but unknown behavioral ‘rail factor’ that may bias travel forecasts toward rail, or favor investments in urban rail, foster economic development, or add to satisfaction of travel. An examination of the rail factor hypothesis is timely because of the many high-speed rail (HSR) ‘bullet train’ projects implemented and planned, especially in Europe. Many railway passenger services have negative net benefits and require taxpayer subsidies, and the HSR projects have experienced substantial cost overruns. In this paper the hidden and unspoken rail factor hypothesis is examined from cognitive and unconscious points of view. The former is based on the mode specific constants in mode choice models, types of travel time data, values of travel time reductions, and citizen preferences in two urban transport corridors. The unconscious view is based on Freud's conception of the unconscious, on ‘knowledge illusion’ and perceptions about rail travel. It is pointed out that the cognitive factors already broach the unconscious and its dynamics. The cognitive views and realism of the unconscious are brought together via a literature review of the most typical genres on rail factor research.The findings indicate that a behavioral ‘rail factor’ may exist in planning and derives from the pleasure principle, while the revealed preferences in models, based on the reality principle, and the built projects contraindicate the presence of a ‘rail factor’. The paper calls for perceptive public participation processes, for a greater scope of issues in planning transport projects to help reinforce the reality principle, and for explicit recognition of the unconscious (motives) in transport infrastructure and service decisions.

Seat allocation model for high-speed railway passenger transportation based on flexible train composition

Seat inventory control is a crucial technique for railway revenue management. In literature, most of the existing seat allocation models assume a fixed capacity like classical revenue management. To extend the literature, this paper relaxes the assumption of fixed capacity by flexible train composition and discusses the effect of flexible train composition. The probabilistic nonlinear programming model is proposed for high-speed railway passenger service network formed by multi trains with different stop schedule plans. The model is transformed into equivalent linear programming which can be solved by ILGO CPLEX quickly. This paper makes seat inventory control and train composition decisions simultaneously considering stochastic demand and passenger choice behaviour. Numerical experiment results show that the policy under flexible train composition is superior to that under fixed train composition. The sensitive analysis shows that demand intensity, fare classes and elasticity of demand have a significant impact on the policy. The proposed model can provide a decision-making basis for discount sales and ticket allocation under flexible train composition in railway passenger operation.

Competition in the railway passenger market: The challenge of liberalization

European country members have been opening up to competition railway passenger services in recent years, whereas others still remain on the way to liberalization. The recent Commission’s fourth European Union (EU) Railway Package has updated the European legislation to ensure an effective liberalization within the EU country members by 2020. It is intended to enhance firms’ efficiency and also consumers’ benefits. In this article, we study different paths towards liberalization from the traditional state-owned monopoly configuration. First, the monopoly outcome is presented, as it is the current situation in a number of EU country members. Second, the oligopoly models are introduced to study different paths towards an effective competition as a result of different market configurations. It is found that liberalization may enhance consumer surplus keeping operators’ profitability only when variable costs and access charge to the network are low. Finally, some regulatory measures are discussed.

Analysis on Improving the Quality of Railway Passenger Transport Service

ABSTRACT It is an opportunity and a challenge for the railway passenger transport in China to serve the railway. In order to gain a firm foothold in the increasingly fierce market competition, the most important thing is to strengthen the passenger service quality management. This paper analyzes the current situation of railway passenger service quality, points out the difficulties and problems in the current railway passenger service, puts forward the main measures to improve the quality of railway passenger service, such as innovative service concept, ensure the quality of equipment, integrate passenger quality standards, Quality of passenger services.

Competition in Swedish passenger railway: Entry in an open access market and its effect on prices

The Swedish market for passenger railway services has been open to competition since the year 2010. Although minor entries have been made since this date, the incumbent SJ only faced substantial competition on the tracks when MTR entered the Stockholm-Gothenburg line in March 2015. Using unique Swedish ticket price data from operators' websites, this paper investigates what effects this entry has had on market prices.The results show that the incumbent's prices decreased by 12.6 percent on average between March 2015 and June 2016. The price level of the competitor is well below the average price that was offered in the pre-entry period. Further, the largest price reduction, in percentage terms, was found on tickets booked 13 days before departure date. Finally, the observed price decrease in the paper is most likely at a short-run equilibrium, or an ongoing process, implying that prices might adjust further in the long-run.

RAILQUAL: a multiple item scale for evaluating railway passenger service quality and satisfaction

It was found that leading models and instruments in the area of service quality tend to be based on exploratory factor analysis and have not been informed by advances in measurement theory, particularly co-variance-based structural equation models. The diverse nature of requirements of stake holders in railways makes it extremely difficult to decide upon what constitutes quality in railway passenger services. Hence, identification of common minimum quality items suitable for all passengers will help design the system and there by improve passenger satisfaction. To address this issue, we applied the recent advances in measurement theory to the dataset and compared two different modelling methods namely exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Based on the psychometric scale development approaches, this research conceptualised, constructed, refined, and tested a multi-item scale 'RAILQUAL' that examined key factors influencing railway passenger service quality. Through qualitative and quantitative studies in three phases a 18-item, six-dimensional 'RAILQUAL' model was developed. RAILQUAL is a measuring instrument for service quality and passenger satisfaction in Indian railways which can be applied across other railways also worldwide with some minor modifications locally.

RAILQUAL: a multiple item scale for evaluating railway passenger service quality and satisfaction

It was found that leading models and instruments in the area of service quality tend to be based on exploratory factor analysis and have not been informed by advances in measurement theory, particularly co-variance-based structural equation models. The diverse nature of requirements of stake holders in railways makes it extremely difficult to decide upon what constitutes quality in railway passenger services. Hence, identification of common minimum quality items suitable for all passengers will help design the system and there by improve passenger satisfaction. To address this issue, we applied the recent advances in measurement theory to the dataset and compared two different modelling methods namely exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Based on the psychometric scale development approaches, this research conceptualised, constructed, refined, and tested a multi-item scale 'RAILQUAL' that examined key factors influencing railway passenger service quality. Through qualitative and quantitative studies in three phases a 18-item, six-dimensional 'RAILQUAL' model was developed. RAILQUAL is a measuring instrument for service quality and passenger satisfaction in Indian railways which can be applied across other railways also worldwide with some minor modifications locally.

Models for railway timetable optimization: Applicability and applications in practice

This paper provides an overview of railway timetable design in practice and the combinatorial optimization models that have been proposed for this application, putting emphasis on passenger railway services in the European railway market.We start with a description of the role of the timetable for a railway system, including the perspective of both types of railway companies: train operating companies (TOC) and infrastructure managing companies. We elaborate on the different subprocesses in timetable design that have to be conducted, some of which are exclusive to TOCs, while others are in the responsibility of the infrastructure manager.The two major streams of combinatorial optimization models for railway timetabling must not be understood as concurring models. Rather, they address different subprocesses, even with a focus on different types of railway companies. In this paper we provide a comparison of the different approaches on a number of relevant criteria.Having sketched the major streams we list methods that have been developed for improving the robustness of timetables, including stochastic optimization models and light robustness models. We also provide a description of a number of applications of timetable planning models in practice. We conclude this paper with some topics for further research.

Intercity Railway Passenger Transport Service Quality Evaluation Method Based on Passenger Satisfaction

Intercity railway is the most effective means to solve intercity traffic problems, and passenger satisfaction is closely related to intercity railway passenger transport service quality. Thus, a reasonable evaluation method is conducive to the improvement of intercity railway passenger transport and further to improve passenger transport service quality. First, introduce intercity rail passenger satisfaction philosophy, build intercity rail passenger satisfaction conceptual model. Then, combining with intercity railway passenger transport characteristics and service requirements, an evaluation index system for intercity railway passenger transport service quality based on passenger satisfaction is put forward. Also, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation algorithm and a related example are both given. The results show that the proposed method can reasonably evaluate passenger transport service quality and excavate and analyze potential factors which are helpful to improve passenger transport service quality

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ON PROVIDING THE SERVICE IN IC TRAINS BETWEEN REPUBLIC OF SLOVAKIA AND REPUBLIC OF CROATIA

In today's liberalized market of passenger railway services are in use trains ranks. Train rank means a level of service that has applied on train. The highest ranks trains are Eurocity and Intercity. Eurocity trains generally connect major cities between at least two countries, while the Intercity trains typically connect important cities in a state. The survey is the standard way to examine passenger's satisfaction. Therefore, this survey has been conducted in the Slovak and Croatian Intercity trains. Analysis of survey results show some strong and some weak points of each operator and the habits and opinions of the passengers. Based on the results of the survey, improvements are necessary in the punctuality, comfort and in providing Wi-Fi services. It is necessary to establish methods for developing services that will bring higher satisfaction of passengers as the final aim.