Cluster analysis on railway infrastructure standards in China and its application to railway efficiency improvement

The present paper structures an infrastructure standard cluster by studying the attributes, the level of application, and the implementation object of more than two hundred railway infrastructure standards in China. These standards are classified and fitted into different specific categories of the cluster, as a result, a systematic and complete standard cluster forms. A concept of comprehensive standards is put forward during the development of the proposed standard cluster. The proposed cluster could not only guide the preparation of railway standards, improve the economic performance of railway construction, but also helps to enhance the efficiency of the whole railway technical system. Cost reduction for HSR is chosen as an efficiency improvement objective to study how the proposed standard cluster helps to get a set of complete technical solutions. Study results reveal that the cluster can provide a basis for a comprehensive study on specific technical aspects (e.g., cost reduction), and can further extend to a number of applications regarding to efficiency improvement of the railway infrastructure system.