Conference article

Passenger and freight traffic growth on Britain’s railways has led to increased needs for maintenance, renewal and enhancement of the national railway network, and reduced opportunities for access to the network to conduct these engineering activities without disrupting operations. As a result, the costs of compensation to operators for service disruption and revenue loss have been increasing in line with traffic levels. There tends to be a trade-off between the cost efficiency of engineering activities and the compensation costs for the operational disruption caused, since longer track possessions are typically more efficient, but also more disruptive, reducing network availability for operations. There is thus a need to reduce and, ideally, minimise the total costs of engineering activities and compensation for the disruption caused. The current possession planning process does not actively aim to minimise service disruption and compensation costs, much less the combined engineering and compensation costs. This paper describes the detailed review of the current possession planning process, including data availability and needs, that is being undertaken. It also outlines a methodology that will be applied in order to (i) amend the current possession planning process to reduce its disruptive impact and compensation costs, thus increasing network availability for operations, and (ii) identify data requirements to enable the assessment of duration, engineering costs and timetable impacts/compensation costs associated with alternative possession strategies, and apply these in combination with scheduling techniques to reduce and, ideally, minimise combined engineering and compensation costs, and the detrimental impacts on railway users and funders

Railways, Maintenance and Renewals, Engineering Access, Network Availability, Possession Planning, Costs