Luca Rizzetto

A supply-demand study of practice in rail logistics higher education

This paper includes a study conducted to analyse the current state of supply and demand for higher education in rail logistics. More specifically the study presented consists of two surveys, as follows. The first survey, Supply Survey, explores existing transport and logistics-related courses and educational programmes offered in higher education institutions. The second survey, Demand Survey, examines demands for rail logistics higher education and aims to understand the current needs for higher education in the sector. This paper shows that a spectrum of rail, freight transport and logistics related courses and programmes exist, however there is a strong need for a more specific training and education offering operations management skills needed to improve the company performance, efficiency and quality of service provided.

Rail Education in Italy: The Successful Experience of Cooperation Between Academia and Industry at Sapienza

The aim of this paper is to describe three different examples of cooperation between academia and industry in the field of railway transport that have been successfully carried out at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in the last few years. The first experience is the postgraduate course in “Railway Infrastructure and Systems Engineering” promoted by “La Sapienza” and funded by the major rail companies operating in Italy that for years represents perhaps the most important initiative in Italy to train and then hire young engineers in the rail sector. The second experience is a course on “Risk assessment in the Railway Sector” delivered by “La Sapienza” for engineers employed in Trenitalia, the main Italian Railway Undertaking, owned by FS Italiane Group. This type of training is more common, but it is interesting to note that companies in Italy require academia to train their engineers in a crucial and rapidly evolving field such as railway safety. The last experience is a specialization course in “Infrastructures and Railways System” designed and delivered together by “La Sapienza” and Italferr, the engineering service company of the FS Italiane Group, for the Sultanate of Oman Ministry of Transport & Communications, which is an interesting example of how companies and academia can work together to export Italian railway know-how to the world. It is possible to note that the three cases are examples of three different levels of collaboration between academia and companies: the first level concerns the recruitment and the basic training of young engineers to be employed in companies; the second the specialist training of engineers already employed in companies; the third a training activity for third parties useful to export Italian railway know-how and technology in the world.

Present and Future Operation of Rail Freight Terminals

Rail freight has not progressed coherently to economy: during the last century, the wagonload was the core business of railways, later declining in favor of combined transport, which include the notion of transshipment in an intermediate terminal. Terminals are a key element of transport services and, in this study, the main goal are methods suitable to evaluate the performances of different types of rail freight terminals: Rail to road for long distance and shorter range units transfer, Rail to rail for shunting and/or gauge interchange, Rail to waterways (sea and inland). The evaluation of the performances of terminals and the influence on them of innovative operational measures and technologies is based on a selected combination of tested analytical methods based on sequential application of algorithms and discrete events simulation models, capable to quantify different Key Performance Indicators.