LIFE CYCLE COSTING APPLIED TO RAILWAY DESIGN AND MAINTENANCE: CREATING A DASHBOARD FOR INFRASTRUCTURE PERFORMANCE PLANNING

Restructuring of European Union railways and an increasing number of build-operate-transfer contracts necessitate performance-based infrastructure management. Since 1998, Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) has provided a decision support system (DSS) for analysis of long-term impacts of design and maintenance decisions in relation to future maintenance and traffic conditions. A computer tool is used to estimate total lift cycle costs. Infrastructure availability and reliability forecasts are included in these estimates. This paper describes DSS design, and the effectiveness of decision support in a real-life case study is briefly demonstrated. The DSS proved to be valuable, as it enabled testing the cost-effectiveness of decision alternatives.