The potential cost from passengers and how it impacts railway maintenance and renewal decisions

To plan Maintenance and Renewals (M&R) for the heavy railway lines, scheduling work possession time and deciding the closure of railway line are quite challenging for Infrastructure Manager (IM) at tactical planning level. As usual, the direct costs such as the materials costs, man power price and machinery costs are the important factors for IM to evaluate all the alternative schedules.

At the same time, the potential cost from passengers is also crucial to minimize the impacts to the society. A phase-based planning toolkit is developed to help IM to plan and compare project proposals from a wider cost scope, integrating the passenger loss and direct costs into the comparison at planning stage.

Passenger loss is estimated basing on the potential delay time values. The case study shows the potential cost from passengers is one of the key factors impacting the rank of M&R options. It even dominates the overall cost comparison for the busiest railway stations. In such case, the track closure time has to be decided according to the passenger loss instead of the direct costs.

Sometime the best proposal for society might be the most expensive solution for IM. Therefore the potential passenger loss is not something that can be ignored at planning stage.