Contribuição para a determinação da capacidade de vias ferroviárias

Abstract

The capacity of railways depends on the performance of the installed infrastructure, the adherence of the programmed timetable, the efficiency of the signaling system and the reliability conditions of the rolling stock. The theoretical capacity is unattainable, because there is no perfectly fulfilled planning and events occur that generate delays in programming. In effect, railways are operated, limited to their practical traffic capacity. In this work a limitation was found in the methods commonly used to calculate the practical capacity of the roads. In this method, parameters related to the performance of the rolling stock, the reliability of the track or the efficiency of the signaling system are not taken into account. In order to propose a more realistic method to calculate the practical capacity of the track, it was taken into account that the operational efficiency coefficient is a function of the adhesion between the programmed and realized timetable with regard to the trips made and programmed and the programmed cycle time and accomplished. With this, it was possible to construct a method to calculate the coefficient of operational efficiency and then to calculate the practical capacity. In order to demonstrate the application of the method, an application was made at a concessionaire in Rio de Janeiro. The objective of the work is fulfilled when calculating the practical capacity of each branch and it is demonstrated through indicators that the different capacity results have different motivations.