Abstract

The paper analyses the main technical and economic elements of the current European rail freight market and presents the basic concepts of possible new technologies in the rail freight system. They would enable the railways to enter the more rewarding niches of the freight transport market. In an attempt to understand better the problems of introducing innovations into the transport sector this paper also considers the theoretical framework and analyses the implementation paths of the proposed technological innovations. New technologies are confronted with various barriers and difficulties created by the existing and dominant technological paradigms. These are often powerful enough to prevent the introduction of alternatives and promising innovations. The empirical part of the paper focuses on the possibilities of combining the existing innovative rail freight technologies which could, with the appropriate organizational solutions (time-tables) and political support, increase the competitiveness of the rail freight transport in new and promising market segments.

Abstract

Competitiveness of rail transport compared to road transport has been reducing, especially on regional railway lines. To improve this situation, the EU adopted various directives and regulations to increase efficiency of railway undertakings. In this paper we present an organizational and economic model based on European policies for local railway system. The organizational model is based on multi-criteria decision analysis. For the economic model we used an econometric approach to estimate the cost function and marginal costs in regional lines, which constitute the basis for railway charges. By implementing such an organizational model, the functioning of the railway network will improve. The research found that a change in the existing model of calculating costs of infrastructure use would bring economic effects for the railway infrastructure manager and the providers of transport. Using the proposed model we also found that it is reasonable to increase the flow of goods on unused regional railway lines because the railway infrastructure maintenance costs are inelastic with regard to transported gross tons. Konkurentnost željezničkog prijevoza u usporedbi s cestovnim se smanjuje, naročito na regionalnim željezničkim prugama. Kako bi se poboljšala ta situacija, EU je donijela razne direktive i pravila u svrhu povećanja učinkovitosti željezničkih poduzeća. U ovom radu predstavljamo organizacijski i ekonomski model koji se zasniva na europskoj politici vođenja lokalnog željezničkog sustava. Organizacijski model se temelji na analizi odluke o više kriterija. Za ekonomski smo model primijenili ekonometrijski pristup u procjeni funkcije troškova i marginalnih troškova na regionalnim prugama, koji predstavljaju osnovu troškova na željeznici. Primjenom takvog organizacijskog modela, poboljšat će se funkcioniranje željezničke mreže. Istraživanjem se ustanovilo da bi promjena postojećeg modela izračuna troškova korištenja infrastrukture donijela ekonomske koristi rukovodiocu željezničke infrastrukture i onima koji su zaduženi za promet. Primjenom predloženog modela također smo ustanovili da ima smisla povećati protok robe na nekorištenim željezničkim linijama jer su troškovi održavanja željezničke infrastrukture neelastični u odnosu na prevezene bruto tone.

Abstract

This work presents a scoping model to predict ground-borne railway vibration levels within buildings considering soil-structure interaction (SSI). It can predict the response of arbitrarily complex buildings in a fraction of the time typically required to analyse a complex SSI problem, and thus provides a practical tool to rapidly analyse the vibration response of numerous structures near railway lines. The tool is designed for use in cases where the ground-borne vibration is known, and thus can be used as model input. Therefore in practice, for the case of a new line, the ground motion can be computed numerically, or alternatively, for the case of new buildings to be constructed near an existing line, it can be recorded directly (e.g. using accelerometers) and used as model input. To achieve these large reductions in computational time, the model discretises the ground-borne vibration in the free field into a frequency range corresponding to the modes that characterize the dynamic building response. After the ground-borne response spectra that corresponds with the incident wave field is estimated, structural vibration levels are computed using modal superposition, thus avoiding intensive soil-structure interaction computations. The model is validated using a SSI problem and by comparing results against a more complex finite element-boundary element model. Finally, the new scoping model is then used to analyse the effect of soil properties, building height, train speed and distance between the building and the track on structural-borne vibration. The results show that the scoping model provides a powerful tool for use during the early design stages of a railway system when a large number of structures require analysis. Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España) BIA2013-43085-P Document type: Article