Timetables - Articles and news items

Creating a fair and open rail market to compete with road and aviation is key

Latest issue / 6 December 2011 /

Over the coming weeks and months, EU policy-makers will lock horns in earnest over new rules to ensure fair and open competition in the European rail market, both freight and passenger. On economic grounds alone it is critical that the right rules are in place but it is equally important from an environmental standpoint.

The EU is pursuing ambitious reductions in CO2 and the right conditions for growth in international rail travel could encourage many more people to choose the train over less carbon efficient options such as the car or plane.

Transport accounts for almost a quarter of total EU greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is the only sector where emissions continue to rise – an increase of 36% since 1990. If Europe is serious about reversing this trend and meeting its global environmental commitments, it needs to get its transport pricing and infrastructure investment policy right. (more…)

Enhancing investments for a quality network

Latest issue / 6 December 2011 /

The Railway Infrastructure Administration, state organisation (SŽDC) is the infrastructure manager in the Czech Republic and, in addition to other duties is responsible for the modernisation and development of the railway network. It launched its operations on 1 January 2003 as one of two successors of the former Czech Railways state organisation (the other successor is the Czech Railways, joint-stock company). The separation of the infrastructure manager from the biggest railway carrier (Czech Railways) launched the transformation of the railway system in the Czech Republic, a process which went on to implement another change on 1 September 2011.

The transformation of the railway system in the Czech Republic continues

SŽDC’s primary task is to carry out the function of the owner and the operator of the national and regional rail. The principal operations include operating the railway infrastructure, en – suring its operability and, last but not least, ensuring the modernisation and development of the railway network in the Czech Republic. SŽDC manages state assets represented by the railway infrastructure in the Czech Republic. The railway network of the Czech Republic is one of the densest in Europe; we have 0.12km of lines per square kilometre. (more…)

Improving Melbourne’s metropolitan train system one step at a time

Issue 4 2010 / 3 August 2010 /

Six months in to its contract as operator of Melbourne’s metropolitan train network, Metro’s focus is firmly on improving asset reliability, simplifying the timetable and making every minute count.

In 2009, the Victorian Government selected a new contractor to operate Melbourne’s metropolitan rail services. The network assets, which are Government-owned and funded, have been privately operated and maintained since 1999.

On 30 November 2009, Metro Trains Melbourne (Metro) began operations, taking over from former operator Connex (Connex was involved in the management of Melbourne’s rail network since it was privatised, and assumed full operational control of the network in 2000). (more…)

92% of UK trains arrive on time

Rail industry news / 23 March 2010 /

Train performance improved by almost 6% in February compared to 2009 with 92 out of 100 trains arriving on time over the last four weeks. (more…)

c2c sets new rail industry punctuality record of 96.6%

Rail industry news / 15 March 2010 /

Rail industry official figures have confirmed that National Express train operator c2c has set a new punctuality record for Britain’s franchised railways of 96.6% for their Public Performance Measure (PPM) train service performance over the last 12 months, as measured to the period ended 6 March 2010. This achievement is another record-breaking effort by the c2c team who continue to set the highest standards of train service punctuality, which was recognised by the recent award by Modern Railways magazine of their inaugural ‘Golden Whistle’ for the best punctuality amongst all train operators in 2009, with c2c averaging 96.3%. (more…)

Triple A approach tested in practice gives valuable results

Issue 1 2010, Past issues / 28 January 2010 /

In Issue 1 2009 of European Railway Review, an article was published about how ProRail expects to realise a growth of 50% by applying a new approach. This approach is known as the Triple A. In this article, I will discuss the progress since January 2009, but I will first give a brief outline of the scope of Triple A. (more…)

Facilitating traffic growth in the Netherlands: the ‘Triple A’ strategy approach

Issue 1 2009, Past issues / 23 January 2009 /

Over recent years, minds have been focused on improving the system reliability of the Dutch railways. So far, it has proved possible to shoehorn the capacity requested by transport operators into the timetable each year, even though the network is one of the most intensively used in Europe. Now that reliability has been put in order, and the demand for capacity is increasing, the time is right for expansion and for raising capacity utilisation above traditional standards.

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SUPERNOVA – the evaluation tool

Issue 4 2007, Past issues / 30 July 2007 /

In early 2005, European Railway Review’s sister publication, Eurotransport, published an article describing the main functions and the development of SUPERNOVA – the evaluation tool of ÖBB Passenger Transport Department. Since 2005, there have been some relevant improvements of SUPERNOVA which has enlarged widely the possibilities to use the model. This article will discuss those improvements and give an update on the SUPERNOVA evaluation tool.

As described in the article in Eurotransport Issue 2 2005, SUPERNOVA at that time was already a very detailed VISUM-based public transport model which covered the whole railway network and timetable and all regional bus services routed on a very fine road network. The model was intensively used to evaluate the effects of timetable changes (rail and connecting bus services) on the public transport demand. One effect of the intensive timetable evaluations under usage of SUPERNOVA was that the costumers of ÖBB PV AG in 2005 were more satisfied with the timetable than in the years before, although train kilometers were reduced compared with the previous years. (more…)

SBB – service upgrades for tomorrow’s railway

Issue 4 2007, Past issues / 30 July 2007 /

Three years after the Rail 2000 project entered the operational phase, SBB now plans to introduce further service upgrades. In particular, the opening of the Lötschberg Base Tunnel in December 2007 will shorten journeys to Valais and Italy. The new timetable due to be introduced in December 2008 will see further improvements along the Gotthard route as well as in international services.

Since the major Rail 2000 timetable change in December 2004, SBB has seen both passenger numbers and passenger-kilometres rise. Passenger traffic volumes reached unprecedented levels in 2006 and this trend is set to continue. The upward trend was also clearly apparent in the first quarter of 2007. Compared to the same period last year, the total volume of passenger traffic rose by just under 6% to 73 million people. Passenger-km increased by just under 5% to 3.6 billion. This positive development could also be seen in terms of our regular customers. Sales volumes for the GA and Half-Fare travelcards have been rising since the start of the year (see chart). In order to capitalise on this very positive situation, SBB now needs to further upgrade its train services. The individual changes to be made to the 2008 and 2009 timetables are described below. (more…)

Railroad simulation using OpenTrack

Issue 3 2007, Past issues / 6 June 2007 /

OpenTrack is a user-friendly railroad network simulation program. It is a microscopic model that simulates rail system operations based on user defined train, infrastructure and timetable databases. OpenTrack can be used to evaluate and test infrastructure plans and operating schedules in order to optimise network and timetable design. It can be run on several different computer platforms and incorporates the benefits of object oriented programming language with a common data interface structure. The program has been used successfully on projects in Europe, Asia, Australia and America.

Railways are highly inter-related systems combining fixed infrastructure networks with specific rolling stock and a precisely choreographed timetable. Careful planning is critical for railway success since network capacity cannot be easily calculated, infrastructure is very expensive, changes are very disruptive to operations and poorly planned infrastructure can significantly increase operating costs. Furthermore, planning highly inter-related systems is particularly challenging because many different combinations of infrastructure improvements, rolling stock and timetable changes can be used to achieve any given objective. (more…)

RailML – a standard interface for railway data

Issue 4 2005, Past issues / 3 November 2005 /

As the number of different railway simulation and operation programmes increase, developing and maintaining individual interfaces will become impractical. Therefore, RailML has been developed using the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) to simplify data transfer through the use of a common data structure – a simple and efficient way to transfer data between applications. (more…)

Train punctuality in a new perspective

Issue 1 2005, Past issues / 2 March 2005 /

There have been numerous projects over the years that have aimed at improving the punctuality of trains. Different levels of ambition have met with varying degrees of success. It can be concluded that the various campaigns and projects have frequently had a directly positive effect on punctuality.

However, when the campaign or project has come to an end, the work has failed to result in any really effective and sustainable procedures with which to retain the positive effects that have been achieved. During the period following the quality improvement work, punctuality has gradually deteriorated. Quality work aimed at an improved level of punctuality has instead largely developed into being a descriptive set of punctuality statistics with information on causes of disruptions and attempts to define the problem-owner. Activities aimed at actually solving systematic punctuality problems have been sadly lacking. Being able to work with punctuality matters on a deregulated railway market requires entirely different measures. Banverket has therefore initiated punctuality improvement work in cooperation with the major rail companies that are established in Sweden. This joint punctuality improvement work has been abbreviated to PULS.

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