Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Punctuality and railway maintenance
2005 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Long and frequent train delays, striking many periodically make headlines. The question is raised: what might be done about it? The on-going deregulation of the Swedish railway, with more actors entering the market, contributes to the question's topicality. In this thesis, problems and symptoms concerning punctuality are described and analysed. Herein, punctuality is defined as the extent to which an event takes place when agreed, for example the agreement between passengers and the company selling the ticket, considering the event that the train arrives at a certain time. The terminology in use on punctuality-related entities is floating. Causes for unpunctuality are related to the infrastructure, locomotives, wagons and personnel. Herein, primarily failures related to infrastructure are discussed. Maintenance, i.e. correcting and preventing failures, together with the track, rolling stock, weather, driver, other personnel and the timetable determine how good the punctuality will be. To the ore and steel transports studied it is more important to limit the lengths of the transport times, rather than having high punctuality, i.e. adherence to timetable. Generally, for freight transports it is difficult to give an estimation of the cost for unpunctuality. To find the root cause of a delay is vital, as is identification of symptoms and triggering events, in order to be able to carry out appropriate actions. Often the information needed to do so is lacking in the Ofelia database for infrastructure failures. Comparisons between regions or over time are complexified by the varying policies on how failure coding is to be performed. To improve punctuality by learning from others is made more difficult by e.g. different countries employing different ways of denoting punctuality. In the transport chain of post in Norway, terms related to punctuality varied even more among stakeholders. They considered being informed on estimated time of arrival as important, but getting this information was, despite this, not among the quantified goals. Few requirements were quantified, despite this often being simple to do. The consequences of failure are important to consider, not only e.g. the number of failures. Studying the variation in transport time on different line sections might help in identifying problems, because coding of delays shorter than five minutes is not carried out in the Swedish railway. Such causes of delay include low contact wire voltage, minor problems with locomotives and slippery rails due to leaves on the track. Disadvantageously, this variation is masked in the case of heavy trains or steep and curvy lines. In a studied maintenance organisation, the indicators of maintenance measured the result of the entire maintenance process. In order to manage each sub process better, it is more advantageous to measure the performance of them individually. Considering the specific sub process that decides which maintenance actions are to be carried out, it only uses expenses for the action itself when deciding, not resulting future costs and punctuality. The indicators focus on measuring past performance, not on facilitating planning for the future. A design of information systems facilitating information usage from different functions of the organisation would facilitate informed decisions. Information concerning technology, traffic and economy need to be integrated.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Luleå: Luleå tekniska universitet, 2005. , p. 21
Series
Licentiate thesis / Luleå University of Technology, ISSN 1402-1757 ; 2005:41
National Category
Tribology (Interacting Surfaces including Friction, Lubrication and Wear)
Research subject
Machine Elements
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-26559Local ID: ed9c69c0-8e8f-11db-8975-000ea68e967bOAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-26559DiVA, id: diva2:999723
Note
Godkänd; 2005; 20061218 (haneit)Available from: 2016-09-30 Created: 2016-09-30 Last updated: 2018-01-10Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(1097 kB)632 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 1097 kBChecksum SHA-512
8e6122f9ecae07202cf69ae35fe3ad3f93b29ccb5e05a2cf7533f235784739b7921c0fa850cfd99431f1dda0d7f3ad26ef1856d89a91821fe415e7da3d1041c5
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Authority records

Nyström, Birre

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Nyström, Birre
Tribology (Interacting Surfaces including Friction, Lubrication and Wear)

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 634 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 349 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf