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Articles

Lean Construction Principles and Railway Maintenance Planning

Daria Ivina & Nils O.E. Olsson, In: Tommelein, I.D. and Daniel, E. (eds.). Proc. 28th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC28), Berkeley, California, USA

Lean construction principles have been successfully adopted in a variety of industries to increase project management quality. This paper addresses maintenance planning in Sweden and analyses its effectiveness in the framework of lean construction principles. To investigate the status and improvement potential of maintenance contractors’ performance, the study focuses on the detailed planning process, which is mainly the responsibility of contractors. A literature review, a data analysis and interviews were used to reveal the possible barriers to the adaptation of lean principles to the maintenance industry. The study presents a developed theoretical framework for the analysing maintenance processes in the perspective of lean construction principles. We found that the application of lean principles has the potential for improvements in the planning process, but there are some barriers to effective implementation, including a lack of knowledge about lean principles at contractors’ sites. 

Articles

Significance of the contractual relationship for the efficient railway maintenance project planning

Daria Ivinaa, Nils O.E.Olsson & Lena Winslott Hiselius, Procedia Computer Science, 2022.

Efficiently planned railway maintenance helps ensure reliable infrastructure and the proper functioning of its components. The Swedish Transport Administration delegates maintenance work to contractors through a tender process. This paper analyses differences in communication and collaboration in the planning and execution of maintenance under two contract types. A document review and interviews with 22 project managers identifies issues in planning and scheduling related to knowledge transfer at contractor companies, booking time for maintenance and lack of trust between contractors and the client. The results show how the two types of contracts are perceived differently by the parties to the contracts.

Articles

A Methodology for Monitoring Rail Punctuality Improvements

C.W. Palmqvist & I. Kristoffersson, IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2022.

Punctuality is an important aspect of train operations, highly valued by passengers. Both Swedish and Norwegian railways have introduced frameworks to systematically improve punctuality in their systems, inspired by an extensive literature on Total Quality Management. After about a decade with these frameworks, we can see that punctuality has risen by about 2-3 percentage points. However, this pace of improvements is slower than desired. We propose that there is a gap between what most individual improvement efforts deliver, and what can be detected by directly monitoring punctuality. This gap stifles the desired culture of constant improvements. We instead propose a methodology for how to monitor punctuality improvements, by focusing on the constituents of a train trip. Using 20 years of data from commuter trains in three metropolitan regions (Stockholm, Gothenburg & Malmö), we show the frequency of runtime and dwell time delays is directly related to punctuality. These delay frequencies are also easy to measure and target, and more easily capture the intended effects of specific improvement efforts. Our hope is that this framework and measures such as these will better enable systematic efforts to improve railway punctuality.

Articles

Nyckeltal för punktlighet på järnväg - del 2

Ida Kristoffersson & Carl William Palmqvist

I denna sammanfattning ges en översikt över resultaten från forskningsprojektet Nypunkt2.0. Nypunkt2.0 har utförts av forskare vid VTI och LTH och finansierats av Trafikverket (TRV2019/70093). Projektet har pågått från november 2019 till juni 2021. Till projektet har också en referensgrupp varit kopplad som har samlats 7 ggr under projekttiden. I referensgruppen ingick representanter för organisationerna Tillsammans för Tåg i Tid (TTT), Trafikverket, Öresundståg, Västtrafik, Region Stockholm och MTR Pendeltågen.

De metoder som har använts inom Nypunkt2.0 är:

  1. Intervjuer/workshops med intressenter inom området pendeltågens punktlighet
  2. Bearbetning och analys av LUPP data på minutnivå gällande pendeltågsrörelser 317 miljoner observationer från de tre storstadsregionerna (Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö) under åren 2001 2020.

Ett viktigt resultat från Nypunkt2.0 arbetet är det ramverk för punktlighetsindikatorer som vi utvecklat inom projektet. Ramverket beskriver hur indikatorer för punktlighet verkar på olika nivåer i en hierarki där det högsta målet är hög kundnöjdhet (nivå 1). För att nå hög kundnöjdhet behöver resenärer och tåg komma i tid (nivå 2). Indikatorer på nivå 1 och 2 mäts i efterhand som släpande indikatorer vilka ger en bild av hur väl uppsatta mål har nåtts. För att resenärer och tåg ska komma i tid behöver tågresans olika delar ske enligt plan i så stor utsträckning som möjligt (nivå 3) och för att de ska göra det krävs rätt förutsättningar hos infrastruktur, fordon, stationsutformning, tidtabell, väder m.m. (nivå 4). Indikatorer på nivå 3 och 4 mäts före eller under tågresans gång som ledande indikatorer att styra mot för att på sikt nå hög punktlighet.

Articles

Adaptive Travel Behaviors to Cope with COVID-19: A Swedish Qualitative Study Focusing on Everyday Leisure Trips

Emma Strömblad, Lena Winslott Hiselius, Lena Smidfelt Rosqvist & Helena Svensson, Sustainability, 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a rapid change in travel behavior for different types of trips, including everyday social and recreational leisure trips. People have used adaptive travel behaviors to cope with the new circumstances for activities and transport. Due to the Swedish strategy focusing on more voluntary restrictions, people have had reason to consider which trips and activities to skip and which to keep. The overall aim of the study is to explore and deepen the knowledge about adaptive behaviors used and seek to understand its possible implications for future travel behavior change towards sustainable mobility through the use of qualitative interviews focusing on everyday leisure trips. The results illustrate how people have used a range of adaptive behaviors to cope with the implications of the pandemic, with cancellation and change of transport mode being the ones most reflected upon by the interviewees. Further, the results reveal how the overall label “everyday leisure trips” in fact includes a variety of trip purposes that differ in terms of flexibility and importance and must thus be approached in different ways in transport policy measures.

Articles

Planners’ analysis and opportunism – benefit analysis in the Swedish HSR-project: a preliminary analysis

Erik Ronnle, European Planning Studies, July 2017

The dominating formof analysis in the transport sector is cost–benefit analysis (CBA). This study investigates the purpose and use of an alternative analysis intended to complement CBA in the Swedish high-speed rail project. According to CBA calculations, the project is
heavily unprofitable. While some politicians called for project termination, the project leadership launched an alternative benefit analysis that calculated only benefits (disregarding costs). This was intended to be a basis for decision making on station localization and financing agreements, but it was quickly downplayed due to its methodological inconsistencies. However, the project leadership still used the identified benefits opportunistically as a counterweight to the negative CBA results. They also engaged local-level civil servants and politicians in making the reports. This built political momentum and made the local-level civil servants and politicians adopt the mindset of the project. This study shows how a methodologically flawed analysis is used for political manoeuvring. From a scientific CBA perspective, this is alarming, but from a political perspective it is not surprising. The findings echo earlier research showing that analysis for decision making is often used for political purposes. The results suggest that future research should consider how opportunism in alternative benefit analysis can be limited.

Articles

Influence of public bus transport organisation on the introduction of renewable fuel

Malin Aldenius, Research in Transportation Economics, 2018.

The need to decrease emissions from the transport sector is getting urgent and public transport can play an important role in the transition to low emission fuels. To a large extent, public transport in Europe is provided by regional authorities who controls the traffic to a varying degree, from complete public monopoly to competitive tendering. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse how the organisation of the public bus transport market influences the introduction of renewable fuels. The focus is on understanding what the motivation is for the use of different organisational forms and what challenges and opportunities the authorities in a region encounter during the introduction of renewable fuels. Interviews with authorities in ten Swedish public transport regions show that when functional requirements are used in competitive tendering it will exclusively result in the cheapest renewable fuel available. Thus, if new fuels or technologies should be able to enter the market, either it will be necessary for regional authorities to take more control using specific requirements or publicly management, or the national government must introduce policy instruments that enable new renewable fuels to become competitive on the market.

Articles

Strategic use of green public procurement in the bus sector: Challenges and opportunities

Malin Aldenius & Jamil Khan,Journal of Cleaner Production, 2017.

Green public procurement is believed to have the potential to contribute to environmental improvement and diffusion of green technologies. The aim of this paper is to compare and analyse how two Swedish regions use public procurement to promote the introduction of renewable fuels in their public bus transport systems. The method is a qualitative comparative case study, based on interviews and document studies. The paper addresses the questions of what the strategic motivations are for using public procurement to stimulate renewable fuels, and what the practical challenges have been in relation to five important factors identified from previous research: strategies, requirements, costs, size and knowledge. In one region, procurement is used in a strategic way to create a local market for biofuels, which poses higher demands on political backing, information and knowledge, the way requirements are set, and an acceptance of increased costs. In the other region, procurement is used instrumentally to increase the share of biofuels in a cost-effective way that gives room for more flexibility and reduces the demands on the procurers. This paper highlights the importance of context when assessing green public procurement schemes and analyses the case-specific influence of factors on the outcome of green public procurement. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license

Articles

A novel approach to economic evaluation of infrastructure?—Examining the benefit analyses in the Swedish high-speed rail project

Erik Ronnle, Case Studies on Transport Policy, 2017.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel approach to economic evaluation of infrastructure, the benefit analyses in the Swedish high-speed rail project, and to analyse what role these can play in the decision-making process. The reports identify benefits from infrastructure investment at the local level and were intended to assist in making co-financing agreements and as a basis for decisions on route-planning and prioritisation of public transport investments. The study finds that the benefit analyses are insufficient as decision bases as they doublecount benefits, disregard costs, are methodologically inconsistent and lack comparability. Rather, they seem to fulfil the role of negotiation bids in a process that focuses on measuring the level of commitment and the willingness to contribute financially to the project. It seems that the new method increases the space for political manoeuvring which together with the one-sided focus on benefits risks worsening the optimism bias observed in mega-project planning.

Articles

Justifying mega-projects – An analysis of the Swedish high-speed rail project

Erik Ronnle, doctoral thesis, 2019.

Mega-projects are a growing phenomenon worldwide. More and more projects are started and they grow ever bigger in size. At the same time, there is overwhelming evidence that mega-projects tend to run late, overrun in terms of costs and fail to deliver the expected benefits. Paradoxically, more and more money is invested in projects that fail to deliver on their promises. This dissertation analyses how mega-projects are justified through a case study of the Swedish highspeed rail project and the National Negotiation on Housing and Infrastructure (Sverigeförhandlingen). The Swedish high-speed rail project is arguably the biggest project ever initiated in the country and fits the definition of a mega-project. It is planned to connect the three largest cities Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö with high-speed rail tracks at an estimated investment cost of 230 billion SEK (€23.1 billion). The project is highly controversial in the public debate. It impacts a large number of people and involves substantial financial commitment. Interestingly, it is also heavily unprofitable in cost-benefit analysis calculations. Based on these calculations, the project is unprofitable and should be cancelled. Still, the project has been allowed to continue by two consecutive governments. Analysing how this project is justified makes it possible to address the wider issue of why mega-projects continue to hold such appeal among decision makers despite their track record. The dissertation finds that the Swedish high-speed rail project is being justified based on a combination of strategies: widening the scope, producing encouraging numbers, creating and mobilising stakeholders, and arguing using a policy narrative. It shows how the project leadership skilfully bypasses criticism from cost-benefit analysis and succeeds to gather support for the project despite the numbers. The research has been done at Lund University School of Economics and Management and K2 – the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Public Transport.