Optimizing transit maintenance and rehabilitation to support human development and sustainability: A case study of Costa Rica’s railroad network

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2019

Subject Area

place - north america, place - urban, planning - service level, mode - rail, policy - sustainable, infrastructure - maintainance

Keywords

Asset management, decisionmaking, human development, optimization, railroad, sustainability

Abstract

Public transportation plays a critical role in improving human development and consequently the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by United Nations. Convenient and efficient transit enable inhabitants to reach labor markets, access social support facilities as well as health and education services. This study develops a decision-making support framework for transit agencies to select optimum maintenance, rehabilitation, and upgrade alternatives to accomplish good levels of service and improve human development and sustainability indexes. A case study of Costa Rica’s great metropolitan area is used to illustrate the study with various budget scenarios. The results show that the proposed system can accomplish significant improvements on both level of service and human development. It is also confirmed that the explicit consideration of human development and sustainability made a significant difference as compared to the classical approach, which only considers the level of service (LOS). The proposed model could be used by other public transit systems.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Taylor&Francis, copyright remains with them.

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