I'm excited to inform the masses that I have a paper accepted to the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board! The abstract below.
Email me if you have any questions about the research.
COMPARISON OF THE CAPACITY OF SINGLE AND DOUBLE
TRACK RAIL LINES USING SIMULATION ANALYSES
Abstract
Federal,
state and regional transportation authorities have shown an increased interest
in adding or increasing passenger rail service between many city-pairs. The
most commonly proposed approach to achieve this has been to operate passenger
trains on existing freight-railroad infrastructure. However, operation of
passenger and freight trains on the same infrastructure poses a variety of
challenges due to their different performance characteristics. Additionally,
track configuration – single versus double track – can significantly influence
the interaction effects between trains. The maximum speed of passenger trains
has little impact on the performance of freight trains on single track lines.
However, in double track configurations, the speed of the passenger train will
have a major impact on freight train delays. Single track can show an
asymmetrical delay distribution centered on an average run time, with very few
trains arriving close to the minimum run time. A double track configuration can
result in a delay distribution shaped similarly to an exponential distribution
with many trains maintaining their minimum run times. In both single and double
track, a higher passenger train maximum speed can lead to a greater range of
possible travel times. These analyses can help further understand the
interactions between passenger and freight trains for current and future shared
corridor operations.
