Estimation of social benefits for travel time delay and reliability by crash reduction in regional railroad

The importance of railway safety has been growing due to aging railroad facilities and increases in train breakdowns. Preemptive and preventive management of rail safety is critical to enhancing railway safety. Socio-eco-nomical evaluation of safety projects is critical to check the feasibility of or to prioritize safety projects. Loss of rail accidents have already been considered in feasibility studies in South Korea; however, it is still necessary to improve research in terms of delay reduction and improvement of reliability due to accident reduction. This study suggests a method and related unit values for measuring the socio-economic benefits of delay reduction and improvement of reliability due to accident reduction. To this end, using the Railway Accident Database of the Railway Safety Management System, we calculated the unit values of delay time and number of trains due to accident occurrence. The accident type was re-segmented in order to consider equipment failure as much as possible. Second, the total service distance and total delay time were estimated based on the reliability index values presented in the previous study. Based on the estimated delay time and the delay reductions from the suggested unit values, the reliability indicator is recalculated to reflect the improvement of travel time reliability due to accident reduction. Equations to calculate the benefits of safety projects are provided and examples are also described. The results are discussed by comparing them with existing accident losses.