Railway Capacity Handbook: A Systematic Approach to Methodologies

Additional demand to be placed upon railways in Europe in order to provide third party usage of infrastructure is the today's basic theme of railway capacity. The complete separation of railway infrastructure ownership and operation is also a potential reality in the near future, which would result in even greater competition for railway infrastructure. Furthermore, when capacity analysis is requested, the choice between available procedures is not easy. Difficulties include the numerous interacting/interrelated factors, the complex structure of the railway layout and the magnitude of terminology required. The present paper focuses on the available and/or common used techniques and methodologies for valuating railway capacity. In the paper, a new proposal of coordinate use and comparison of methods to perform capacity analysis is presented. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of the Programme Committee of the Transport Research Arena