Branch Line Study
Client: Turkish Railways, Nov 2012 - Feb 2013
The Turkish railway network is relatively sparse, and some centres of significant industry remain distant from the network. With railways now politically-acknowledged to be an important mode of transportation in Turkey, and with the elements of a high-speed passenger network put in place, TCDD is turning its attention to improving its freight transport. Working with a consulting firm PGlobal based in Ankara, the Railway Consultancy was tasked with providing some background guidance as to the likely viability of constructing freight branch lines to a range of locations and comparing different modes of transportation linking industries to the closest railway stations through provision of a simple spreadsheet model.
RCL’s work was to construct the model and develop the underlying logic, whilst PGlobal collected data on freight flows to/from the areas of interest, identified the industrial zones, clusters and plants having annual transport capacity of 200,000 tonnes or more, specified the shortest rail routes to the main railways (to which the branch line would be connected), and provided an assessment of the economic and social impact of it.
Whilst the model could not hope to capture all the relevant nuances of the operational planning of freight trains (including portion working, cross-forming and back-haul), it was able to provide guidance on likely train quantities, taking into account traffics limited by either weight or length. The competitive position regarding other modes was taken into account by examining the relative times and distances by competing modes (road and sea), with a logit model applied to provide an estimate of mode share. The model also calculated the environmental and road safety consequences of transferring the traffic to rail.
Last updated: Sunday, 18th December 2016
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