The Railway Consultancy Ltd - Specialists in Planning Economics and Management

Access Rights Database and Validator

Client: Railtrack plc HQ, Nov 1998 - Dec 2004

Railtrack

Train operators have rights to run over the Railtrack network, and these rights are described in Schedule 5 of their track access agreements. Unfortunately, due to the speed at which privatisation was carried out, these documents are non-standard; moreover, as train services have evolved, most agreements have now been amended many times. Train operators may also not run all the trains to which they are entitled. This means that it is quite difficult for Railtrack to know exactly how many train paths it has sold, and hence to plan capacity efficiently.

The Railway Consultancy Ltd were commissioned to report on the different logical types of access rights, and subsequently to code up into a database 14 different rule types covering about 95% of all rights for all train operators. These rights were then checked against the Train Service DataBase using the ARDV, an application specially written by Sema plc but tested by the Consultancy. Recommendations were made in respect of amending contracts, in producing a standard template Schedule 5 for future use, and in advising on the use of the flex (variability) of slots as part of the pricing regime.

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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 26, 2005