INFLUENCE OF THE FREIGHT TRANSNATIONAL RAIL LINER SERVICE ON THE TRAIN SCHEDULING IN CASE OF MAJOR CORRIDORS

摘要

In this paper we discuss several consequences of the freight transnationalrail liner service on the rail corridor capacity. The Northern part of the IVth TEN-Tcorridor on Romanian territory has specific feature related to the passenger flowsconnecting important Romanian demographic and economic clusters, on one side, and onthe other side, to its diagonal crossing aspect, from the Western border to the Constantaport, connecting the Central Europe countries to the Black Sea regions, which means thatthere are a lot of expectation in terms of this corridor rail capacity: this corridor will, befor a long time further, the single and first completed continuous upgraded andmodernised rail corridor. Its utilization will necessarily be heterogeneously planned(meaning for passengers rapid trains and freight rapid trains, from domestic/internalmarket, but especially for external market of Romania). In this paper, we consider asimple mathematical model for the calculus of capacity in two different cases: for ahomogeneous utilization, meaning that all trains have the same running speeds and forheterogeneous utilization, when the passenger trains have the higher speed and hence, thehigher priority over the freight trains, even if some of them are freight transnational linerservice. Special feature of liner rail service has to be considered (fixed schedule, no stopsfor passenger train advance). We draw several useful possible solutions to be consideredin order to preserve the active corridor capacity, and to assure a smooth flow for thetransnational liner services, which ultimately will enhance the rail attractiveness.