Rail network resilience and operational responsiveness during unplanned disruption: A rail freight case study

Abstract

This paper focuses on the resilience of rail freight operations when affected by extreme weather events. Such events, most likely linked to climate change, are becoming more common and it is vital to mitigate their effects on freight transport activity. Based on a British case study of rail network disruption resulting from a key line closure in early-2016, the analysis considers the impacts on rail freight service provision and the wider supply chains.Following a review of the relevant literature, the case study is analysed using data from a combination of sources including an annual rail freight database, open access real-time train running data, observation surveys and stakeholder interviews. This reveals widespread consequences of the disruption, with fewer freight trains operated than normal, and longer and less punctual journeys for those which ran. However, despite the considerable disruption during the period of the line closure itself, there has been no discernible long-term impact on the rail freight flows which were impacted by the closure. The insight provided by the analysis is used to make a series of recommendations to the rail industry and policy makers.

Empirical dynamics of railway delay propagation identified during the large-scale Rastatt disruption

“…The exceptional situation was so special that modelling the same system with some minor changes (as OnTime did) might not have been enough to capture the true magnitude of effects. The extra delay observed in real life compared to the simulation gives an idea of the suboptimal planning of freight traffic done in reality, in a hurry, and under strong time pressure, in the area around Schaffhausen, which had moreover to cope with exceptional situations for train drivers, passengers, freight companies, schedulers, dispatchers, as typical in exceptional situations 42 , 46 .…”

Infrastructural, Decisional and Organizational Aspects to Use Mode Shift to Handle Disruptions in Freight Transport: Literature and Expert Survey

“…We tackle the shortcomings of the existing academic studies by an empirical analysis utilizing semi-structured expert interviews with differing views on the transport system. This approach has been used already in the literature [1], [18] for studying practical aspects of transport disruptions.…”

“…All investigated articles agree that mode shift as a response to disruptions in the multimodal transport system is beneficial in terms of delay reduction as well as cost reduction when considering supply chain disruption costs and delay costs. Investigation of response in past events is rare (see for example [1], [18]). Optimization implies low redundancy; second best option is worse.…”

“…Most often, the compensation of the capacity in a mode cannot be complete, though. True redundancies in the whole system are still necessary to mitigate the consequences of disruptions [18], [22].…”

Evaluation of Spatial Resilience of Highway Networks in Response to Adverse Weather Conditions

“…Adams et al [8] examined the restoration of highway corridors by tracking truck speed and the number of trucks on the move before and after adverse weather events. In the context of road networks, research on highway resilience has been focused on the assessment of topological and functional performance (e.g., traffic flow and time delay) by simulating and identifying the alternative paths and performance gaps between certain O-D pairs in response to disastrous hazards [9][10][11]. Given the existing literature about highway resilience rarely focus on road safety in terms of the location and geographic proximity of crashes, identifying spatial patterns of crashes represents another vital perspective of highway resilience-spatial resilience.…”