American Railways

Competition issues in network industries: the Latin American railways experience

This paper discusses several competition issues that have emerged in the Latin American rail industry after the recent restructuring experiences started during the 1990s. The analysis focuses on Brazil and Mexico providing a brief account of the main characteristics of the concessioning process in each of these two countries. The relevant competition issues are then analyzed from a double persp...

On Generalized Random Railways

We consider a random generalized railway defined as a random 3-regular multigraph where some vertices are regarded as switches not allowing traffic between any pair of attached edges. It is shown that the probability that the generalized railway is functioning is linear in the proportion of switches. Thus there is no threshold phenomenon for this property.

A Comparative Analysis of Information Technology Strategy in American Airlines and French Railways (France)

In choosing the computerised reservation system Sabre, French Railways was hoping to benefit from the same strategic advantage this technology brought to American Airlines during the deregulation of US air transport in the 80s. However, the adoption of a new transport distribution model based on the deregulated US air industry proved to be controversial, leading to implementation problems. The ...

Safety Functions in Railways

There are several ways to describe and structure safety rules for railways, and a few examples are given in the report. A tentative holistic framework for describing safety features in relation to safety rules is presented. The approach has been applied on rules needed to regulate the communication between different railway organisations and other parties.

Prospects for Sustainable Railways