Evaluating the effectiveness of introducing technical condition monitoring systems for railway crossings

Abstract

   The place where a road and railway intersect at the same level is a potentially hazardous area. For this reason, there is a trend in many European countries to reduce the number of railway crossings. The crossing will be dismantled and an overpass on different levels will be designed in its place. This reduces the likelihood of traffic accidents. However, the construction of an overpass is a very time-consuming and labour-intensive process that requires considerable expense. It is therefore worth considering other methods to improve safety at railway crossings. The current state, as well as early detection of pre-failure states of the main technical elements of a railway crossing largely determines its accident-free functioning.
   The purpose of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of diagnostic systems. Implementation of diagnostics and monitoring systems of the current state of the crossing allows reacting immediately to occurrence of faults in operation of railway automatics, to make correct decisions aimed at exclusion of equipment failure. The feasibility of introducing diagnostic systems is proved by the example of the programme Crossing Monitoring. The carried out calculations fully confirm the effectiveness of its implementation, as the cost of the programme implementation and maintenance was 281 600 rubles, which significantly exceeds the potential losses associated with possible train delays, they amounted to 3 434 741 rubles.