Lcc Railway

Life cycle cost analysis for managing rail infrastructure
Concept of a decision support system for railway design and maintenance

In the last decade managing railway infrastructure in Europe has changed compared to the century preceding it. Due to the restructuring of railways, which has resulted in separate Infrastructure Management and increasing performance demands from governments andTransport Operating Companies, infrastructure performance has become an important issue. Reliability requirements, budget limits, and operational conditions, such as the time available for maintenance, are becoming increasingly strict. As a response Infrastructure Managers (IMs) have started to develop computer-based tools for a quantitative analysis of the (long-term) impacts of design andmaintenance decisions. These tools should enable IMs to systematically optimise and underpin their budget needs, minimise the total costs for a required performance level, and guarantee the infrastructure quality in the long run. Although progress has been made over the last years, these tools are still in an early phase of development, and have not yet been successfully implemented in the design andmaintenance management processes. In this paper an approach based on Life Cycle Costing has been developed, which is able to support decision-making on design and maintenance quantitatively, even in absence of sophisticated maintenance planning tools, using expert judgement beside empirical data. Key to the approach is a decision support system (DSS) for analysing the long-term impacts of design andmaintenance decisions on reliability, availability and cost of ownership. The DSS combines data from different management areas, such as construction, maintenance, financing and transport operations, in order to make estimates of the life cycle costs. Infrastructure availability and reliability are included in the analysis of life cycle costs, as they have an impact on the costs and revenues oftransport operations. The DSS concept and its application during the tender for the Dutch High-Speed Line are presented. Both results and obstacles are discussed. Especially in a design phase a lot of uncertainty is involved in the analysis. The DSS proves to be a valuable tool for testing the

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Life Cycle Cost Analysis for Managing Rail Infrastructure

robustness of design and maintenancedecisions and for focusing the discussion on the important cost-driving factors.

1. Introduction
Due to a rapidly changing environment, managing railway infrastructure in Europe has changed in the last decade compared to the century preceding it. In the first place EU directive 91/440 requires that, in time, a separate entity has to provide the railway infrastructure in order to stimulateprofit-driven (trans-European) transport operations and transparent cost accounting of infrastructure and operations [European Commission DG VII, 1997]. In most EU Member States as well as other European countries the restructuring of the railway is in progress, the split-up and privatisation of British Rail being the most radical example [Root et al., 1997]. In the second place the operationalconditions on many railway lines are increasingly strict in order to facilitate more diverse transport services (e.g. light rail and high-speed trains), more trains per hour, longer operating hours and an improved punctuality. These conditions conflict with the efficient scheduling and execution of maintenance works and can, in the long run, lead to an increase in maintenance and renewal as well. In thethird place government regulations imply more and more restrictions, related to railway safety, labour safety and noise levels, whereas government grants for maintenance are no longer easy to acquire [see e.g. Hazelaar et al., 1997]. Beside the increasing performance requirements set by government and operators, Infrastructure Managers (IMs) are often confronted with worn-out assets, backlogs...