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Wednesday, 08 September 2010
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SIG 13 - Rail Transport

 

 

Launch Date: It is proposed to launch this SIG at WCTR12 in Lisbon (2010).

Objectives: The proposed SIG would focus on academic research on rail operations, planning and economics. It would cover passenger and freight and long distance, regional and urban (including metro and light rail) services. Its objectives would be to:

  • Promote the exchange of ideas, methodologies, and results of rail transport and  research through conferences, symposia, and regional meetings         
  • Organize and coordinate rail transport sessions at the WCTRS conferences;
  • Promote interaction between academics, government and industry researchers, industry executives, and policymakers on important policy, strategy, operations and technology issues affecting rail transport.
  • Develop rail transport research capabilities for projects of an international scale requiring multidisciplinary cooperation;
  • Promote linkages between the research community and international agencies and institutions dealing with rail policy and capacity management; and
  • Facilitate the formation of international research teams for conducting world-scale research programs on critical rail transport issues.

Membership: Membership will be open to any academic researchers with research interest in the subject area. The SIG will have its own website, hosted by the University of Southampton. It is proposed that the SIG will be jointly led by Professor John Preston (University of Southampton), who will lead the policy and economics aspects and Professor Ingo Hansen (Delft University of Technology), who will lead the planning and operations aspects. Short bios and contact details are given below.

It is proposed to contact a number of bodies about this SIG. In North America this will include the Transportation Research Board (TRB), including AR010 (Intercity Passenger Rail Committee - Chair Anthony Perl, Simon Fraser University) and AP065(2) (International Rail Transit Sub-Committee - Chair Gregory Newmark, UC Berkeley). In Europe, we could garner support from EURNEX - which is headed by Wolfgang Steineke (FAV Berlin) and organised in to a number of poles of which the most relevant for this SIG are: Poles 1 (Strategy and Economics - Chris Nash and Jose Viegas) and 2 (Operations and Systems Performance - Stefano Ricci).

We would also exploit synergies with the International Association of Railway Operations Research (IAROR), of which Professor Hansen is President and there are Board Members from Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

In Asia, we have contacts with the Korean Railroad Research Institute (Yong-Sang Lee), the Japanese Society of Transportation Economists (Fumitoshi Mizutani) and the Railway Technical Research Institute (N. Tomii).
Industrial contacts will be made via the International Union of Railways (UIC) and the International Union of Public Transport (UITP), as well as relevant national bodies.

 
Contact Details John Preston
Professor of Rail Transport and Director of  the Transportation Research Group (TRG), School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton. Director of Development of Rail Research. Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Phone: +44 (0)2380594660
www.sr2.soton.ac.uk
www.trg.soton.ac.uk

Ingo Hansen Professor for Design of Transport Facilities, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology. Head of the department of Transport & Planning. Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Phone: +31(0)152785279 www.iaror.org  
 
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