Infrastructure's influence on rail punctuality

Abstract

This paper focuses on the possibilities for root cause analyzes of delays and estimation of effects of delay-causing incidents by linking infrastructure data and operational data. Such information could be used to prioritize improvement and maintenance activities and to quantify the effects of improvement measures. We have analysed and compared data from two infrastructure databases and one punctuality database in Norway. Linking of data between the databases should theoretically and technically be possible but our analyses have shown that this is challenging. To make linking of information possible we recommend the railway industry to develop a general code-system for all three databases that directly ties the information together.