In railway operations, a timetable is established to determine the departure and arrival times for the trains or other rolling stock at the different stations or relevant points inside the rail network or a subset of this network. The elaboration of this timetable is done to respond to the commercial requirements for both passenger and freight traffic, but also it must respect a set of security...

Safety and reliability of a railway system primarily depends on the soundness of the critical components and their freedom from defects. With increased rail traffic carrying heavier loads at higher speeds, a quicker more efficient way of inspecting rails at manufacturing stage is now mandatory. At Jindal Steel and Power Ltd., India, a highly reliable and effective flaw detection method has been...

In the era of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the public and private sectors are increasingly committed to the growth of transport-oriented infrastructure, including ports, highways, bridges, and rail facilities. In particular there has been much interest in international bridges spanning the Rio Grande, the roads and rail lines leading to these bridges, and the port facilities...

The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are the largest container port complex in North America and fifth largest in the world. Growth in U.S. Pacific Rim trade has put pressure on the landside transportation systems serving these two ports. In order to address this growth and mitigate environmental impacts, the ports are implementing new operational strategies and infrastructure improvements. ...

There are approximately 261,000 rail crossings in the United States according to the studies by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). From 1993 to 1998, there were over 25,000 highway-rail crossing incidents involving motor vehicles averaging 4,167 incidents a year. In this paper, we present a real-time computer vision system for t...

An important aspect of railroad environmental risk management involves tank car transportation of hazardous materials. This paper describes a quantitative, environmental risk analysis of rail transportation of a group of light, non-aqueous-phase liquid (LNAPL) chemicals commonly transported by rail in North America. The Hazardous Materials Transportation Environmental Consequence Model (HMTECM)...

The projected growth in container traffic at ports of New York and New Jersey, along with the expected regional growth of commuter traffic, will cause a significant increase in traffic congestion. This will result in deteriorating performance of the regional transportation system, including highway system providing access to the port. Because of limited ability to expand highway and rail infras...

Major industry and policy changes are taking place in the Japan’s inter-city travel market. This study empirically estimates the air-rail travel demand model with aggregate OD market data. The estimated model is then used to estimate the effects of introducing super high speed rail (HSR), and alternative levels of CO2 emission taxation on the demands for airline and HSR modes. Our key findings ...

Air and rail transportation systems are characterized by important common features: they serve a significant share of passenger traffic in Europe; their functioning relies on the cooperation of many stakeholders operating a fixed timetable, often with competing objectives; and they have been characterized by quite a fragmented development following national borders. For these systems, the Europ...

Two predominant areas of ongoing transport electrification are the uptake electric vehicles (EVs) in personal transportation and electrically powered trains for mass - both significantly increase demand stresses on power grid. In this research, a novel V2G application to support rail is proposed. A local network can reduce peak grid arising from electrified traffic enable brake energy recovery ...