Determinants of airport train operational performance

This study aims to analyze the improvement of the operational performance of Indonesia’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport train through service quality which is mediated by train passenger loyalty and passenger satisfaction. The main problems in this study are the use of the same railway for long-distance train, airport train, and commuter Line train, the limited use of airport railway with four schedules, the headway which becomes 30 minutes since the number of travels becomes 82 trips, and the tariff being applied now is considered as burdening the passengers. The research method uses a quantitative analysis approach with the technique of Structural Equation Modeling-Lisrel. Data collection is done through observation and questionnaire distribution. The respondents are 306 passengers of trains heading for Soekarno-Hatta Airport. The benefit of this study for the domestic railway company is that by improving service quality, passenger loyalty and satisfaction, it will improve the operational performance of airport trains. The result of this research indicates the significant influence of service quality variable on passenger loyalty through passenger satisfaction, the significant influence of service quality variable on operational performance through passenger satisfaction and passenger loyalty as well as the significant influence of passenger satisfaction variable on operational performance through passenger loyalty.

Directivos ante situaciones de crisis. El uso de LinkedIn por parte de la CEO de Metro de Madrid durante la borrasca Filomena / Senior managers in crisis situations. The use of LinkedIn by the CEO of Metro de Madrid during the storm Filomena

In January 2021, the storm Filomena paralysed Spain. One of the most affected cities was Madrid, which suffered a general collapse for several days. Metro de Madrid (underground railway company and one of the most popular public services in the city) continued to provide service to its users. Silvia Roldan (CEO of Metro de Madrid) wrote a daily post on LinkedIn to explain to users what problems they were facing, how they were being solved and how the service was ensured. Metro de Madrid is an underground railway company that was inaugurated in 1919. It extends over 294 kilometres distributed in 302 stations. It employs 7,000 persons. Other data of Metro de Madrid are: 2,400 cars, 8,758 security cameras, 1,263 vending machines, 2,424 tele-indicators, 1,703 escalators, 541 lifts and 5,386 intercoms. "LinkedIn is a social network that has a great attraction, you are addressing a professional audience, which judges you on the basis of the work you do", says the CEO of Metro de Madrid in an interview conducted to illustrate this research. This research is based on two hypotheses: 1) In a crisis context, direct communication between a company's executive and stakeholders reduces uncertainty and helps to restore institutional equilibrium; and 2) It is possible to find a paradigmatic model in this type of communication with specific stakeholders. This research carried out a quantitative and qualitative analysis using a content analysis of Roldan’s posts on LinkedIn during this crisis and an interview with the CEO of Metro de Madrid. This case gives us some lessons in communication as main results. LinkedIn is an optimal platform for crisis communication, especially if we want to transmit moderately long messages, with nuances, aimed at a professional audience willing to listen and dialogue. Roldan’s colloquial and friendly tone used in her posts are justified in this case (Filomena crisis). She is CEO of the company, direct witness of the facts and responsible for the solutions that are implemented. She uses the first-person narrative, which produces closeness and is a good remedy against uncertainty. It complements institutional messages, transmitted through institutional media and channels, which use a more aseptic and formal tone. The use of photographs in the published posts establishes an emotional links between the author of the post and readers. Readers feel like a direct witness of the facts, especially when the photograph is a subjective close-up. LinkedIn, despite not being Metro de Madrid's main communication channel, is a useful and valuable platform for communicating in emergency situations, even in a more personal and less institutional way than other platforms. Perhaps its greatest virtue is to target a professional and specialised audience, which can be proactive in the resolution of an emergency. The use of LinkedIn in emergency situations is still under-researched compared to other social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram. This article is part of the competitive research project: “Crisis and emergency communication in Social Media. Study of its use in Spain and design of information protocols for institutions and media (COMCRISIS - PID2019-109064GB-I00)” granted and funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Spanish Government.

Improvement of Energy Savings in Electric Railways Using Coasting Technique

The main goal of this work is the evaluation of the energy saving achievable in railway drive when using the coasting technique extensively, with reference to a practical case of the Italian railway network taken as an example. This technique consists in exploiting the kinetic energy accumulated by the running train whenever possible. To implement a driving style on purpose, the only driver contribution is not enough; indeed, it is necessary to provide an embedded automatic calculation control system. In the paper, an algorithm has been developed to evaluate the energy absorption of railway locomotives during the normal service and validated on a real railway line. The proposed hardware and software system could be implemented aboard the train, allowing motion data processing in real-time. Speed, time intervals and power absorption for a given path are calculated; then, the best coasting parameters are estimated to maximize the energy savings. In particular, the case study presented in the paper showed that the fast-run strategy, always adopted by the railway company to recover an unexpected delay, can lead to a negligible time recovery with respect to the coasting strategy, while determining a significantly larger energy consumption.

Spare Parts Supplier Selection Design: A Case Study of A Railway Company

Spare parts support is essential for rolling stock maintenance management. The current supplier selection model determines the selected supplier based on evaluating one aspect of the criteria (product aspect). The selection of suppliers with poor performance occurred between 2018-2020 related to the delivery of goods that exceeded the deadline and goods that did not meet specifications. The first objective of this research is to analyze and determine the relevant priority criteria for selecting suppliers of rolling stock spare parts for railway companies. The second objective is to determine the rolling stock spare parts supplier by using the evaluation criteria determined in the previous process. The method used in this research is the integration of the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and Technique for Others Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solutions (TOPSIS). FDM is used to select important criteria for the selection of suppliers of rolling stock parts. AHP is used to assist in choosing various criteria through evaluation in determining the criteria's weight. TOPSIS is used to assess supplier ratings. A total of 13 criteria from 19 alternative criteria have been selected for railway companies, especially in selecting rolling stock spare parts suppliers. Furthermore, the selection becomes the basis for bidding. Finally, Supplier A is the supplier with the highest relative closeness value (0.591), followed by Supplier B (0.545), and the lowest is Supplier C (0.282).

Grape Harvest Festival in the Town – A Successful Format for Entertainment, Politics, Trade, and Consumption (The Case of Pezinok, in the Slovak Republic)

This article focuses on a three-day town celebration called Vinobranie (Grape Harvest), which takes place in the public space of the town of Pezinok in Western Slovakia. This eventis over eighty years old and was established the representatives of the town in collaboration with the local wine-growing association, organised with the support of the state railway company. The grape harvest festival is a mosaic of various elements with symbolic contents, representing an impressive whole wrapped in an offer of a varied programme and consumption. The study observes the changing form and structure of the festival from its origins up until the present day, as well as the dynamics of the range of its functions in the local community. The author follows an ethnological perspective. She draws on historical archive documents and ethnographic materials. In her analysis, she applies the concept of festival (Waldemar Cudny’s ‘Festivalisation of Urban Spaces’, 2016).

Public transportation and service quality management during the COVID-19 outbreak: A case study of Tunisia

This study aims to investigate the quality management of public transportation services in the Tunisian context during the COVID-19 outbreak. The empirical study was based on the conjoint analysis approach. The sample collected is composed of 250 individuals who often use the train as a means of transport and the pairwise comparison method is adopted for conjoint analysis. This study assesses quality management of customer service and takes into account four aspects of service quality such as comfort, way of reservation (possibility of online booking), speed, and safety. The findings revealed that the optimal combination of service offered by the Tunisian national railway company is characterized by the terms “first class”, “online booking”, “express”, and “safety”. It is favored by Tunisian customers during the COVID-19 outbreak.Additionally, the results show that the maximum utility corresponds to the “safety train” modality followed by “second class”, “online booking”, and finally “stopover”. Moreover, the use of new information and communication technologies (NICT) has importance for train users during the COVID-19 outbreak. Indeed, Tunisians are looking for safety and measures to reduce crowding in a train, to minimize the risk of contagion of COVID-19 outbreak.

Efficiency of using our own bus fleet in multimodal door-to-door service

In the passenger transportation segment, there is a trend towards door-to-door travel planning. This direction, which is relevant in the world practice of passenger transportation, with a correctly proposed approach, can also be used in the cities of the Russian Federation.The use of a multimodal method of passenger transportation together with MaaS technologies in case of maximum involvement of carrier operators will allow passengers to significantly reduce travel time and find a way to reduce travel costs.Sophisticated logistics of commuter rail transport routes for all time periods will attract additional passenger traffic, increasing the profitability of passenger traffic.The conducted research on the example of the transport-interchange complex of the city of N showed the possibility of organizing a passenger's trip "from door to door" with minimal costs and maximum comfort. The passenger railway company receives direct profit from this service, which makes it possible to recoup the project in a short time. Conclusions are made about the dependence of the profitability of the bus fleet on the number of seats, distance and popularity of the route direction. The organization of additional services on the territory as close as possible to the places of embarkation and disembarkation of passengers will increase the attractiveness of the transport and interchange complex for the passenger traffic of N.

Parker v The South Eastern Railway Company (1877) 2 CPD 416

Essential Cases: Contract Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Parker v The South Eastern Railway Company (1877) 2 CPD 416. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Nicola Jackson.

MCTS Based Approach for Solving Real-time Railway Rescheduling Problem

Solving a real-time Railway Traffic Management Problem (rtRTMP) is a challenging task for human operators. To solve the traffic situation, many factors need to be considered. Traditionally, the most critical factor is the availability of the possible routes and the relative position of the vehicles to each other. Besides, additional constraints can be found, such as the velocity, the length, and railway company regulations. The human decision-making process is essential in case of any disturbance (deviation from the pre-planned timetable). The human operator may solve this situation, but generally, the solution is not optimal. In this paper, the authors present a new method, where they consider an MCTS based algorithm to solve the traffic situation in a fast way in a given station. The performance of the algorithm is examined in two abstraction levels. The main purpose is to execute an experimental study to examine the efficiency of the MCTS based algorithms to solve railway traffic situations.