Computers in Railways VII, C.A. Brebbia J.Allan, R.J. Hill, G. Sciutto & S. Sone (Editors) © 2000 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISBN 1-85312-826-0 An access rights database and validator N.G. Harris' & G.B. Cooper* The Railway Consultancy Ltd., London, UK. * Railtrack pic., Euston Square, London, UK. Abstract Under European Commission regulations, railway infrastructure must either be run as a separate company independent of train operations, or have separate accounts prepared. In either case, however, formal access rights are required in order that it is clearly understood which trains are permitted to operate, where and when. In Britain, there are over 30 operators with access rights onto Railtrack's network. Their legal rights are enshrined in Track Access Contracts, but there are a number of problems with these, which are making it difficult for Railtrack to manage the network, and to make investment decisions. Railtrack therefore conceived the idea of an Access Rights DataBase (ARDB), containing operators' rights in a standardised numerical form; results from this will be presented. However, validating these access rights against existing timetables, and against operators' bids for future timetables, is a more complex task, for which a database solution was proposed and is being implemented. Railtrack's timetable Train Service DataBase is being compared to the ARDB, but there are considerable difficulties in identifying trains in both databases. This paper sets out the logic used to overcome these problems, presents results from the practical solution being implemented, and sets out future developments for subsequent stages of this project, which include: • an automatic link to the timetabling system; • development of a more standardised 'template' track access contract; & • reporting rights by location, as an aid to capacity management. Computers in Railways VII, C.A. Brebbia J.Allan, R.J. Hill, G. Sciutto & S. Sone (Editors) © 2000 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISBN 1-85312-826-0 2Q4 Computers in Railways VII 1 Operating the privatised railway Under European Commission regulation 91/440, railway infrastructure must either be run as a separate company independent of train operations, or have separate accounts prepared. In Britain, the railways were both fragmented and privatised by an Act of Parliament in 1994. Railtrack pic is responsible for the infrastructure whilst existing passenger services were put out to tender, with the lowest bidder winning the right to operate a franchise for a period of (typically seven) years. Renegotiation of these franchises has recently started. 2 Track access contracts in Britain In Britain, there are over 30 train operating companies (TOCs) with access rights onto Railtrack's network. These include franchised passenger operators, open- access passenger operators (such as Eurostar), London Underground, and freight operators. They need formal access rights, in order that it is clearly understood which trains are permitted to operate, where and when. Their legal rights of access onto the network are enshrined in Track Access Contracts, which are bulky documents containing details of the vehicles that may be used, the standard charges levied (and how these change if performance by either party varies significantly from that which was assumed) - and the access rights themselves. The access rights are described in geographical terms - train operators need to know how many trains they are allowed to run over which parts of the network. However, there are a number of'dimensions* of access rights, including: • quantities of slots; • intervals between slots; • slot journey times; and • connections between slots. Even within these categories, rights can be expressed in a range of different ways. For instance, intervals between slots can be expressed as: • number of trains per time-period (e.g. 1 train per hour); • maximum & minimum number of minutes between trains (trains shall be between 50 and 70 minutes apart); • clockface intervals (trains must depart at the same time past each hour); or • as above but only on 5-minute points of the clock (xx:00, xx:05, etc.). Unfortunately, the track access contracts were drawn up hastily and without any standard format. They have now been amended many times (for instance, as new services have been planned and introduced), and are becoming unwieldy for management information purposes. This makes it difficult to identify capacity sold, Computers in Railways VII, C.A. Brebbia J.Allan, R.J. Hill, G. Sciutto & S. Sone (Editors) © 2000 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISBN 1-85312-826-0 Computers in Railways VII 205 and hence difficult for Railtrack to make investment and access sales decisions. It may also be an obstacle to trading rights between operators. Furthermore, it should be noted that the access rights are quite independent of the timetable. It is certainly possible for an operator to have more access rights than trains in the timetable - operators can bid for slots but not take all of them up. However, the Rail Regulator can intervene in this process - if, for instance, it was felt that capacity was being purchased for the purpose of obstructing other operators, rather than for genuine use. There have also been occasions when access rights have been found to be inadequate for the purposes of the timetable. A 'supplemental' agreement has therefore been required, in order to formalise the agreed rights. Some contracts now have as many as 50 supplements, reflecting the dynamics of service change since privatisation. 3 A DataBase Railtrack therefore conceived the idea of an Access Rights DataBase (ARDB), which would contain operators' rights in a standardised and more numerical form. During 1998, agreement was reached as to which variables needed to be stored for the various types of access right. Railtrack pic then commissioned Sema pic to construct a database, in Oracle, with The Railway Consultancy Ltd being responsible for the population of that database. During 1999, the database was constructed whilst the access rights of every train operator were coded up into Excel spreadsheets, which were themselves imported into the database. Between them, there were 37,000 access rights, covering the 20,000 daily trains on the British mainline railway network. It was not necessary to code up all the access rights, because some of them were either unusual and/or solely descriptive. Of the 119 logical types of rights found in a scoping exercise, there were 19 generic types. Of these, 12 were coded up within the database, but these cover over 90% of the total number of access rights. These 12 types are set out in Table 1, with the remaining seven types flagged for manual reporting by way of textual descriptions. 4 A logical hierarchy of access rights For any train operator, access rights may be defined at one of a number of levels. At one extreme, there are rights which apply across an entire company's services - there might be a cap on the total number of trains run per day, for instance. At the other extreme, many rights apply to train services with a particular stopping pattern - for instance, the TOC may be entitled to one of these per hour. In fact, we have had to generalise the notion of 'stopping pattern'. We have developed the Computers in Railways VII, C.A. Brebbia J.Allan, R.J. Hill, G. Sciutto & S. Sone (Editors) © 2000 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISBN 1-85312-826-0 Computers in Railways VII concept of a 'location pattern', because we needed to include the details of freight trains which call at selected stations in order to change drivers, A Quanta - numbers of train slots B Trains per unit time - e.g. 1 train per hour C Maximum and Minimum Intervals between trains D Maximum and Minimum Journey Times E Average Journey Times F Stopping Point Dwell Times (at stations, or for crew change or mail loading purposes) G Clockface arrivals and departures (i.e. at the same number of minutes past each hour) H Number of Station Calls (i.e. up to x trains per day may call at a station) I Point on Clock (i.e. confining a slot to be at xx:00, xx:05, etc.) J Total Station Calls for Service Group (i.e. up to y trains per day may call at a group of stations) K Particular (e.g. first, last) Services (e.g. the first train of the day may call additionally at station X) L Pseudo Quanta - totals of train slots, descriptions of 'white' periods during which no trains may run Table 1. Types of Access Rights Coded and also because some data relates to routeing choices when a train does not actually call at a particular station. However, location patterns are very specific. For each pattern, the TIPLOC code for every relevant station or junction is noted, together with a further column of data called the PSPB indicator. This sets out whether the train is only allowed to Pass that location without stopping, or whether it is permitted to Set down passengers, Pick up passengers, or do Both. Location patterns are normally part of a service code, which are defined by route. They comprise a range of similar services on the same line whose location patterns may vary solely because of minor differences in which trains stop at which stations. However, the system also needs to be able to deal with access rights which are grouped across routes e.g. at a terminus station, there may be a cap on the total number of trains permitted across all the relevant service codes. The database therefore uses the concept of 'Service Code Group' to analyse such examples. The inter-relationships between the different concepts used within the database are set out in Figure 1. The database functions through a series of lookup tables.