Is railway capacity unlimited? a practical analyse, applied to South African cases

Abstract

Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 7-10 July 2014 "Leading Transport into the Future", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.Rail is said to have an almost unlimited capacity. The PRASA Technology Framework states that a rail corridor is able to carry 60 000 - 80 000 passengers per peak hour. This paper analyses the practical optimum capacity of metropolitan rail services: an Underground Metro, an All-Stop train, and an Express service. In a practical situation the capacity of rail systems seems to be limited to some 35 000 passengers/hr on one track per direction; only in crush situation the maximum capacity is approaching 50 000. It would need four tracks per direction over great part of a corridor, to accommodate almost 60 000 passengers/hr in a mix All-Stop and Express service, and 80 000 only as crush capacity.