The evaluation of carrying capacity of complex railway nodes is a typical problem to be faced in metropolitan areas. This paper initially analyzes a few methods (Potthoff methodology, Probabilistic approach and Deutsche Bahn procedure) for the evaluation of carrying capacity of complex railway nodes. The aim of the article is to investigate commonalities and differences among these methods in order to try (even in the continuation of the research) to identify potential margins of improvement or to formulate a new approach to evaluate the use of stations in a synthetic mode, considering the characteristics and the limits of the existing and analyzed models. The results of the theoretical analysis have been validated by means of applications to typical case studies. © 2014 The Authors

Introduction Worldwide the transport sector faces several issues related to the rising of traffic demand such as congestion, energy consumption, noise, pollution, safety, etc. Trying to stem the problem, the European Commission is encouraging a modal shift towards railway, considered as one of the key factors for the development of a more sustainable European transport system. The coveted increase in railway share of transport demand for the next decades and the attempt to open up the rail market (for freight, international and recently also local services) strengthen the attention to capacity usage of the system. This contribution proposes a synthetic methodology for the capacity and utilisation analysis of complex interconnected rail networks; the procedure has a dual scope since it allows both a theoretically robust examination of suburban rail systems and a solid approach to be applied, with few additional and consistent assumptions, for feasibility or strategic analysis of wide networks (by efficiently exploiting the use of Big Data and/or available Open Databases).Method In particular the approach proposes a schematization of typical elements of a rail network (stations and line segments) to be applied in case of lack of more detailed data; in the authors' opinion the strength points of the presented procedure stem from the flexibility of the applied synthetic methods and from the joint analysis of nodes and lines. The article, after building a quasiautomatic model to carry out several analyses by changing the border conditions or assumptions, even presents some general abacuses showing the variability of capacity/utilization of the network's elements in function of basic parameters. Results This has helped in both the presented case studies: one focuses on a detailed analysis of the Naples' suburban node, while the other tries to broaden the horizon by examining the whole European rail network with a more specific zoom on the Belgium area. The first application shows how the procedure can be applied in case of availability of fine-grained data and for metropolitan/regional analysis, allowing a precise detection of possible bottlenecks in the system and the individuation of possible interventions to relieve the high usage rate of these elements. The second application represents an on-going attempt to provide a broad analysis of capacity and related parameters for the entire European railway system. It explores the potentiality of the approach and the possible exploitation of different 'Open and Big Data' sources, but the outcomes underline the necessity to rely on proper and adequate information; the accuracy of the results significantly depend on the design and precision of the input database. Conclusion In conclusion, the proposed methodology aims to evaluate capacity and utilisation rates of rail systems at different geographical scales and according to data availability; the outcomes might provide valuable information to allow efficient exploitation and deployment of railway infrastructure, be...

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Introduction As well known, infrastructure endowment influences competitiveness of a region since the characteristics of a transport system in terms of capacity, connectivity, speeds, etc. determine the advantages/disadvantages of an area compared to other locations. This article attempts to investigate the potential impacts on rail accessibility across Europe when different possible operational enhancement scenarios are simulated. Methods The simulations are carried out by means of a combination of the TRANSTOOLS rail network and Traffic Analyst, the post-processing analyses are implemented in Matlab and the results for each zone (at NUTS3 level) are reported both in tabular form and in easy-to-read ArcGIS maps. Several accessibility measures are evaluated including two Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approaches aiming to construct a composite index for embracing all the complementary information provided by 'partial' accessibility sub-indicators; to better evaluate and understand the results either sensitivity and robustness analyses are performed for both the aggregate indicators. ResultsThe outcomes provide insight into where major benefits in terms of accessibility can be expected; in particular the current infrastructure endowment already benefits many regions but improvements in speed could still increase significantly rail accessibility across Europe (mainly outside the core area as in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, etc.). Furthermore both the proposed global indexes, although associating different 'endogenous' weights to the various sub-indicators, appear to be worthy and robust against uniform random noise. Conclusions Ultimately the results provide information useful for the prioritization of investment needs; moreover even if the interpretation of the partial accessibility indicators is clear and useful for policy-makers, the evaluation of a composite measure could allow planners not only to compare or fully rank the level of accessibility for different regions but even to control for eventual confusing and/or incomplete results that may appear when using only a partial approach.

It is widely accepted that "transport infrastructure endowment influences competiveness of a Region; the provision of investment in transport infrastructure entails positive effects on productivity and growth, even if on the other side, heavy infrastructures (as railway lines) could affect negatively on the environment" (5th Cohesion Report, 2010). This article aims to explore the potential impact of improvements of the passenger rail network in order to evaluate how these could potentially increase accessibility and consumer surplus in EU regions; it summarizes the results of the model simulations carried out with a combination of the TRANSTOOLS rail network and the assignment module of Traffic Analyst. Three different scenarios have been tested by changing speeds on the whole network. The post-processing analysis has been carried out with utilities developed in Matlab, while the results for each zone (at NUTS3 level) have also been reported in easyto-read ArcGIS maps. The outcomes provide insight into how the demand for passenger rail transport would react and where the highest benefits and costs, in terms of accessibility and consumer surplus gains, can be expected. This information, in turn, can be useful for the prioritization of investment needs and the identification of parts of the rail passenger market where new demand may be generated.