• East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.35-42
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• 2024

Purpose: A railroad project is a complex system with large construction costs in the initial stage and ongoing operating costs over its lifecycle. Current railroad projects tend to be based on construction options, which leads to huge deficiencies in operating costs. This phenomenon results from a lack of appropriate tools to accurately estimate a railroad project's lifecycle costs. This study attempts to analyze the major components of railroad operating costs and to propose a decision-making system for analyzing the long-term lifecycle costs of railroad projects. Research design, data and methodology: We review the literature and analyze the current status of railroad operating costs in Korea and overseas. Based on previous projects, a framework for project options and operating costs is proposed. The framework is applied to actual railroad projects to demonstrate the validity of the model. Results: Case analysis shows that our framework is comprehensive in analyzing the primary aspects of railroad operating costs and plays an effective role in choosing various railroad project options. This study points out that the railway project operates inefficiently because estimating long-term costs without reflecting specific project options causes many errors. Conclusions: A major contribution of this study is the development of an improved framework for accurately estimating operating costs and providing policymakers and engineering firms with a holistic decision support system. Detailed components in estimating operating costs of the railroad business are discussed. And we present a decision-making tool that policymakers and private businesses can use in planning the railroad business.

• International Journal of Railway
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.80-84
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper was to review Intelligent Compaction (IC) techniques, which is regarded relatively new to the railroad roadbed construction activity. Most of civil structures are built on roadbed that supposed to provide adequate load bearing support to the upper structure through the qualified compaction process. However, it is not uncommon for structure failure attributed to inadequate compaction control take place in field sites. Unlike traditional compaction control method to check field density at several locations, IC techniques continuously measure various compaction quality indices that represent compaction uniformity. In this paper, a series of literature review relevant to IC techniques was conducted to provide concise summary on the following categories: 1) background of IC technique; 2) Summary of IC vendors and basic principles; 3) modeling of IC behavior, and 4) case study along with correlation between IC with other measurements. In summary, IC technologies seem to be promising in future railroad construction to achieve better compaction quality control so that the serviceability of railroad can be ensured with minimizing rehabilitation and maintenance activities.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.271-275
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• 2011

According to governmental policies for green growth, the increase in the traffic volume of railroad is a representative method to reduce total greenhouse gas (GHG) emitted from transport. Comprehensive assessment for the GHG emission of railroad has been studied to compare the difference of transport modes just in the operating step excluded the construction step. The purpose of this study was to evaluate GHG emissions in railroad construction sector. The targets were some construction works for civil, track, building, and electric system in A line. The GHG emission source of constructing railroad infrastructure was mainly the energy consumption of heavy equipments. As a result, the civil construction sector showed more than 96% of total GHG emissions and its specific GHG emission was 2.191 ton $CO_2e/m$. Also, the specific GHG emissions of civil construction works were of the order: earthworks > tunnels > bridges > station. In future, it will be required to calculate the overall GHG emission of railroad through life cycle approaches including operation, maintenance and disposal step.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.651-657
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• 2023

Railroad alignment improvements and operating speed increase occupy considerable portion in recent railroad market. Developing countries have limitations to construction of new high speed railroads due to the burden of budgets and the lack of demands, and the projects of operating speed increase arepracticallyrecommended. Thisstudy developed the methodologyto provide the railroad alignment design alternatives and the costs by upgrading the "Intelligent Railroad Alignment Design Program (ei-Rail)" which has been used to obtain the alignment plans and construction costs for railroad construction projects. The program provides the cost for alignment improvement, design drafts and the effects of operating speed increase with the input of target improvement speed and the prevailing railroad alignment on the numerical map. It is then expected for the ei-Rail program to be used for the supporting tool for the railroad alignment improvement projects.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.739-744
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• 2013

Recently, railroad construction becomes an alternative considering environmental merits such as mass transportation, safety, economy and energy efficiency. Also railroad can have 3 to 4 times better in economy compared to road construction. However, long line and unavoidable sensitive areas hinders railroad construction often resulted in ecosystem degradation. This paper reviewed 27 cases of EIS submitted during 2003-2006 and reviewed major issues on Animal-Plants and Landscape. Noise-Vibration (13.5%), Water Quality (13.5%), Wastes (10.8%) appeared to be most frequent factors to supplement. Route selection in the railroad is the most sensitive issues so that public participation and hearing should be involved in the early stage of the process and social and cultural factors also must be considered to make a final decision on the railroad route location and selection.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.2107-2114
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• 2011

To carry out the evaluation of performance of railway product/system, 3 step verification process(design review-lab test-field test) should be done. In advanced countries, for the effective field test, test-only-oriented track have been constructed and used. In Korea, government announced "The construction plan of railroad test track" at 2009.06. This paper will summarize 'need of test track', 'technical meaning of test track', 'current status of foreign test track', 'fundamental plan and process strategy of Korea Railroad Test Track'. It is no need to say that the wisdom of all railroad related people is required for the successful construction and usage of Korea Railroad Test Track.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.2711-2717
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• 2011

This paper presents the classification scheme of the signal facilities on the railroad considering the construction costs and maintenance costs in a low population area. The construction costs of the new signal facility system can be compare with the costs of the present signal facilities as the classification scheme. The signal facilities on the railroad were classified as the railroad security regulations and then the scheme is considered through the LCC analysis. In order to test this research, the costs of signal facilities obtained from ones on TAEBACK railroad line. The costs categorized the construction costs, the labor cost and the maintenance costs can be effectively applied to the LCC analysis. The scheme is very useful to make a decision whether the new signal facilities on railroad in low population area is build or not in terms of the costs.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2004.06a
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• pp.303-308
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• 2004

It is recently reported that the importance of environmental impact assessment(EIA) about groundwater outflow problems is beingy raised in the case of tunnel excavation during railroad construction. The EIA about groundwater outflow into railroad tunnel is generally performed using the results of numerical analysis embodied through groundwater flow modeling program like MODFLOW. The basic data for this modeling include (1) the geological and hydrogeological investigation data along the planned block of tunnel excavation, (2) total amount of outflowed groundwater during tunnel excavation, and (3) the status of groundwater level fluctuation in the water-supply wells distributed in the planned block of tunnel excavation. In this study, the authors analyzed the cases of the computational modeling about groundwater outflow in three planned blocks of railroad tunnel, and suggest the environmental impact factors and mitigation plan during EIA of tunnel excavation in railroad construction.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.837-842
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• 2022

The "Intelligent Railroad Alignment Design Program (ei-Rail) developed in 2013 has been adopted in the planning and the evaluation/validation of design results of oversea railroad construction projects. Target countries of Korean railroad industries requires the operating speed increase with alignment improvement and the double tracking of prevailing single track railroads as well as new railroad construction. This study is to develop an additional module for double tracking project of prevailing single track railroads in the ei-Rail. The developed method is based on the geometrics of prevailing railroad, and the definition of planned project determines the project cost based on the unit cost by work type, and provides the draft design of double track. The module was validated with a oversea case. It is then expected for oversea railroad double tracking project more efficiently in planning and the evaluation of design results.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.511-514
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• 2011

The impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is the global issue over the world. Korean government has presented various policies to induce GHG reduction for the industries with high energy consumption such as power generation and chemistry. Construction sector has produced a large amount of GHG emissions resulted in the energy consumption of heavy equipments and the use of materials. This study aims to suggest the QA (Quality Assurance) and QC (Quality Control) method to identify and quantify the GHG emissions released from heavy equipments in the railroad construction sector. Generally, the accuracy and reliability of GHG inventory is dependent on the data collection. Therefore, it is necessary to mange the detailed statements for the fuel consumption of heavy equipments and the quantity of work in the field. Also, the breakdown of GHG emission sources should be recorded from the design step of railroad infrastructures. Based on these data, the GHG reduction technologies and polices can be applied in railroad construction sector.