Technical Feasibility Study of Passenger Rail Service along the West Route between Las Vegas and Los Angeles

The study evaluates the feasibility of running passenger train service from Las Vegas, NV on the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR), to Barstow, on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) track, to Mojave on UPRR track again, and to Lancaster connecting Metrolink to their destinations in Southern California. In this study, the railroad infrastructure was inventoried and issues related to running the passenger service were identified. Passenger train operation was evaluated based on the Rail Traffic Controller (RTC) simulation model. The performance measures of passenger trains including travel time, overall delay and average speed are analyzed. The uncertainty in freight flow and its impact on providing the passenger service is addressed by conducting a sensitivity analysis. The conclusion is that the existing railroad infrastructure is sufficient to provide a passenger train service from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. From an operational perspective, the passenger train is not expected to influence freight trains’ performance on the existing railroads. When freight train flows are increased to 50%, the influence of passenger train service on the freight operation is still minimal. This study recommends restoring a platform at the Las Vegas Station. At the Mojave Station, special care should be given on running the passenger trains where there is no direct railroad connection from BNSF to UPRR. Platforms and walkways require construction at the Lancaster Station for transferring passengers between the Metrolink trains and X-Train. Transferring the passenger train at this station involves stopping the train on mainline and coordinating the operations between different railroads.

Application and realization of key technologies in China railway e-ticketing system

Purpose–With the yearly increase of mileage and passenger volume in China’s high-speed railway,the problems of traditional paper railway tickets have become increasingly prominent,including complexity of business handling process,low efficiency of ticket inspection and high cost of usage and management.This paper aims to make extensive references to successful experiences of electronic ticket applications both domestically and internationally.The research on key technologies and system implementation of railway electronic ticket with Chinese characteristics has been carried out.Design/methodology/approach–Research in key technologies is conducted including synchronization technique in distributed heterogeneous database system,the grid-oriented passenger service record(PSR)data storage model,efficient access to massive PSR data under high concurrency condition,the linkage between face recognition service platforms and various terminals in large scenarios,and two-factor authentication of the e-ticket identification code based on the key and the user identity information.Focusing on the key technologies and architecture the of existing ticketing system,multiple service resources are expanded and developed such as electronic ticket clusters,PSR clusters,face recognition clusters and electronic ticket identification code clusters.Findings–The proportion of paper ticket printed has dropped to 20%,saving more than 2 billion tickets annually since the launch of the application of E-ticketing nationwide.The average time for passengers to pass through the automatic ticket gates has decreased from 3 seconds to 1.3 seconds,significantly improving the efficiency of passenger transport organization.Meanwhile,problems of paper ticket counterfeiting,reselling and loss have been generally eliminated.Originality/value–E-ticketing has laid a technical foundation for the further development of railway passenger transport services in the direction of digitalization and intelligence.

Optimization method of urban rail train operational plan based on O-D time-varying demand

Purpose–Under the constraints of given passenger service level and coupling travel demand with train departure time,this study optimizes the train operational plan in an urban rail corridor to minimize the numbers of train trips and rolling stocks considering the time-varying demand of urban rail passenger flow.Design/methodology/approach–The authors optimize the train operational plan in a special network layout,i.e.an urban rail corridor with dead-end terminal yard,by decomposing it into two sub-problems:train timetable optimization and rolling stock circulation optimization.As for train timetable optimization,the authors propose a schedule-based passenger flow assignment method,construct the corresponding timetabling optimization model and design the bi-directional coordinated sequential optimization algorithm.For the optimization of rolling stock circulation,the authors construct the corresponding optimization assignment model and adopt the Hungary algorithm for solving the model.Findings–The case study shows that the train operational plan developed by the study’s approach meets requirements on the passenger service quality and reduces the operational cost to the maximum by minimizing the numbers of train trips and rolling stocks.Originality/value–The example verifies the efficiency of the model and algorithm.