A model of coal transport management in a rail network.pdfVIP

A MODEL OF COAL TRANSPORT MANAGEMENT IN A RAIL NETWORK M. Bielli, G. Calicchio, M. Cini and L. Giuliani National Research Council National Railways Rome, Italy 1. INTRODUCTION Coal transportation by the Italian railway system will constitute one of the main traffic in the next years, due to well known energy problems relative to oil. In Italy coal transportation will be characterized by the follow- ing peculiarities: - coal must be almost entirely imported so that supply will mainly con- cern seaports; - most users, both public production of electric power and heating and private industries will be located in the inland territory; - coal is to be carried essentially by unit blocked trains on the railway network. In a first phase rail traffic of coal will overlap the existing traffic of passengers and goods, without affecting it, and this will be possible owing to the actual limited coal demand. In fact Italian network is not- homogeneous with high technological main lines, almost saturated by the actual traffic, and secondary lines, single track or not- electrified, with low flows and then available for coal transportation. Therefore in this phase the problem is that of using the present rail network in a balanced and rationale way by an efficient management of coal transport, with the aim of minimizing transportation costs without interferring with other kinds of flows. In a second phase, foreseeable increase in coal demand due to plants conversion and new installation will make necessary to plan ap- propriate network expansions. In this case will be convenient to determine a new global alloca- tion of different traffics, in order to assure a bett