Estimating the Reliability of Travel Time on Railway Networks for Freight Transportation

Abstract

Railway freight transportation is an important transport system that its reliability causes economic issues. Freight carriers require predictable travel times to schedule their programs in competitive environment, so the estimation of reliability of travel time is very important. The present study proposes a travel time index that estimates the reliability of railway freight transportation and evaluates performance as well. Travel time reliability is estimated based on the shortest path between O-D pairs. Statistical measures of travel time, defining as the ratio of the 95th percentile travel time and the shortest path mean travel time as an ideal travel time, for each obtained route are calculated according to their selected links. Experimental data on Iranian rail network has been used as case study and results revealed that the routes less than 400 kilometers should be improved in terms of their reliabilities, because they are less reliable than long distance routes.