Bestimmung und Verbesserung der Qualität im Eisenbahnbetrieb

In the context of transport and energy transformation, the aim is to increase rail transport, as it is significantly more energy-efficient than road and air transport. The prerequisite for increasing transport volumes in both rail freight and rail passenger transport is the identification and elimination of critical areas in order to ensure sufficient performance and operational quality. To determine the infrastructure’s performance and thus to identify capacity bottlenecks, common methods can be applied. There are recognised benchmarks to evaluate the determined parameters. However, there is no generally accepted definition of quality in railway operations. Such a definition is necessary in order to identify and resolve critical areas and thus improve the quality and competitiveness of the rail network. Therefore, in this paper a definition of quality and, based on it, a method for the assessment of railway operation’s quality are developed. Quality is defined in accordance with the generally valid European standard on quality management systems by the needs of stakeholders that are relevant for railway operation. Based on these needs, the parameters transport time quotient (timetable), occupancy time rate, severity of delay, connection rate and train cancellation rate can be derived. While most of the needs can be represented by already existing parameters, the severity of delay is defined as a new parameter for the evaluation of delays and changes in delays. The definition of quality levels for the selected parameters and the development of a procedure for the combined evaluation of the parameters as a set allow the identification of quality-critical areas in railway networks. The knowledge of these areas is necessary to implement targeted operational and infrastructural measures for quality improvement. The developed procedure is applied and validated on an example network. It demonstrates how critical areas can be identified and resolved through selected measures.