Strategic Capacity Planning Process for Intercity Passenger Rail

The demand for railway transportation is expected to be significantly increased worldwide; hence railway agencies are looking for better tools to allocate their capital investments on capacity planning in the best possible way. We presented a capacity planning process to help planners enumerate possible expansion options and determine the optimal network investment plan to meet the future demand. This process was applied to the conventional railway system in Taiwan to demonstrate its potential use. Using this capacity planning process will help railway agencies maximize their return from capacity expansion projects and thus be better able to provide reliable service to their customers, and return on shareholder investment.