Title: Quantifying rail transit investments with appropriate measures and metrics

Authors: Shailesh Chandra; Ravi Mazin

Addresses: Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering Management, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., MS 5101, Long Beach, CA, USA ' Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering Management, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., MS 5101, Long Beach, CA, USA

Abstract: An evaluation is carried out to quantify measures for an on-going rail transit investment project. The project involves enhancing the connectivity between San Onofre to Pulgas in the Southern California Region. In this project, a single track is expanded into double line second track construction with a planned completion in the year 2022. The line currently serves both freight and passenger rail at present. With an investment of $30 million in the San Onofre to Pulgas Double Track Phase 2, the following percentage changes would be noted in the short term: the increase in stop-level accessibility along the route of 200%, GHG emission reduction of 1.22%, percentage ridership and boarding increase along the route of 15.8%, travel time reduction of 36%, and resource utilisation increase of 32.3%. The findings are useful for policy makers in assessing investment outcome on intercity passenger rail transportation in California.

Keywords: transit; accessibility; mobility; service quality; investment; rail; riders; metric; measure; policy; emissions; freight; passenger; California.

DOI: 10.1504/WRITR.2020.111093

World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research, 2020 Vol.9 No.4, pp.313 - 333

Received: 05 Oct 2019
Accepted: 05 Jun 2020

Published online: 09 Nov 2020 *

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