Techniques for absolute capacity determination in railways

Capacity analysis techniques and methodologies for estimating the absolute traffic carrying ability of facilities over a wide range of defined operational conditions are developed for railway systems and infrastructure in this paper. In particular, we tackle numerous aspects on which the absolute carrying capacity depends that have not been previously and or significantly addressed before. These include the proportional mix of trains that travel through the system and the direction in which these trains travel, the length of trains, the planned dwell times of trains, the presence of crossing loops and intermediate signals in corridors and networks. The approaches are then illustrated in a case study. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.