Christopher J. Bouch

Introducing New Technology to the Railway Industry: System-Wide Incentives and Impacts

This article is concerned with the role of innovation in cost reduction and the mechanisms for bringing it about. In the first section, it investigates the efficiency of UKs railways through the medium of cost benchmarking of both UK and continental European costs. It finds that Britains rail infrastructure manager faces an efficiency gap of 40 per cent against European best practice and that train operating costs have also risen substantially, both because of rising factor prices (wages and fuel) and because of deteriorating productivity. It then explores the situation surrounding incentives for shaping technological innovation through a series of semistructured interviews with senior managers representing a wide range of railway interests. This section highlights the presence and successful functioning of the commercial mechanism for technology development in the industry both through natural commercial factors and through mechanisms such as track access charges. Finally, it studies the feasibility of modelling systems subject to technological change, with the aim of creating a methodology to assess, at an early stage in the development cycle, the physical impact innovation might have on the existing system. It finds that the objective data needed to construct such models can be extracted from existing technical standards and that systems engineering techniques provide a suitable framework for structuring and linking that data.

Development of a common set of European high-level track maintenance cost categories:

The track maintenance and renewal cost categories used by infrastructure managers (IMs) have an important role to play in pricing transport infrastructure access, improving the efficiency of IM performance, and helping to focus efforts to reduce track costs. However, very little work has been done so far to identify a common set of European cost categories, capable of supporting progress in these areas. This paper describes an analysis of the IMs— existing cost categories, carried out to identify those accounting for the largest proportion of the annual maintenance budget and to develop a common European set of cost categories to support future pricing and efficiency work. The study found five maintenance activities, which account for over 80 per cent of the overall annual track maintenance expenditure, and on which further research should be focused to achieve cost reductions. These were, in the descending order of importance: switches and crossings, inspection, rail changing, tamping, and re-sleepering. It also identified the following categories as the basis for future recording of maintenance costs by IMs: track, inspection, geometry, grinding, welding, drainage, subgrade, periodic, and rail lubrication.

Dataset of the livability performance of the City of Birmingham, UK, as measured by its citizen wellbeing, resource security, resource efficiency and carbon emissions

This data article presents the UK City LIFE1 data set for the city of Birmingham, UK. UK City LIFE1 is a new, comprehensive and holistic method for measuring the livable sustainability performance of UK cities. The Birmingham data set comprises 346 indicators structured simultaneously (1) within a four-tier, outcome-based framework in order to aid in their interpretation (e.g., promote healthy living and healthy long lives, minimize energy use, uncouple economic vitality from CO2 emissions) and (2) thematically in order to complement government and disciplinary siloes (e.g., health, energy, economy, climate change). Birmingham data for the indicators are presented within an Excel spreadsheet with their type, units, geographic area, year, source, link to secondary data files, data collection method, data availability and any relevant calculations and notes. This paper provides a detailed description of UK city LIFE1 in order to enable comparable data sets to be produced for other UK cities. The Birmingham data set is made publically available at http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/3040/ to facilitate this and to enable further analyses. The UK City LIFE1 Birmingham data set has been used to understand what is known and what is not known about the livable sustainability performance of the city and to inform how Birmingham City Council can take action now to improve its understanding and its performance into the future (see “Improving city-scale measures of livable sustainability: A study of urban measurement and assessment through application to the city of Birmingham, UK” Leach et al. [2]).

Developing system models to help Great Britain's railways embrace innovative technologies with confidence

Railways are under pressure to become more efficient and cut their costs; innovation has a part to play in achieving these goals. The railway is, however, a complex and closely coupled system, making it difficult in the early stages of development, to be clear what the system-wide impact of innovation will be. The research covered in this paper stems from the idea that computer-based models of existing systems can help overcome this problem, by providing a baseline framework against which the impact of innovation can be identified. The paper describes development of a repeatable modelling methodology, which elicits objective system data from Railway Group Standards and integrates it using CORE®, a powerful system modelling tool, to create system models. The ability of such models to help identify impacts is verified, using as an example the introduction of RailBAM (a new technology that acoustically monitors the health of rolling stock axle bearings) into the existing hot axle bearing detection system.

State of the Art for European Track Maintenance and Renewal Logistics

Adopting best practice in the field of track maintenance and renewal logistics is crucial to achieving low costs for Europes railway; but, European practices vary considerably between infrastructure managers (IMs). This paper describes research carried out to try and establish the current state of the art for logistics, as a first step to identifying European best practice. Data on existing logistics practices were gathered using two questionnaires: one web-based and featuring questions, which were quantitative in nature, and the other covering qualitative questions, which were dealt with in face-to-face interviews. Data provided by the questionnaires suggest that the current state of the art involves centralized purchasing of components by IMs and use of call-off contracts for procurement. Maintenance work is predominantly carried out by in-house staff, but renewals tend to be let to contractors. Work is mainly carried out during ‘white periods’ in the timetable, when no trains are running; blockades are rarely used. Finally, recycling of components is seen as important from the point-of-view of sustainability, but IMs are finding it hard to make the business case.