Maintenance improvement: an opportunity for railway infrastructure capacity enhancement

The continually increasing demand on railway service in terms of the quantity and quality of both passenger and freight train operations is the core of the general railway capacity challenge. Moreover, this challenge has been the driver for some improvements in the technical system, traffic operation & management as well as maintenance process, although the room for improvement in the maintenance function is still large. An effective capacity management entails critical study of the three essential capacity parameters: infrastructure, traffic and operating parameters. To further explore the fundamentals of capacity management, this paper investigates some essential issues on railway infrastructure capacity. A review of the general railway infrastructure capacity challenge and management is presented, including some strategic measures to enhance capacity and quality of service of existing infrastructure. We have proposed maintenance improvement framework to explore the opportunity of improving the capacity situation on a network. This framework will facilitate the identification of both critical systems and activities with the largest impact on the capacity and also some root causes for critical system. The framework has suggested methodology to improve allocation and utilisation of track possession time, giving room for capacity expansion of existing railway infrastructure.JVT