Publication
The railway reforms introduced since the nineties tend to spread responsibilities among different actors involved in the management of the railway system. On the other side, the governmental organisations are forced to boost the productivity of their railway infrastructure resulting in pressure on the public funding and an increase in the availability demand of the infrastructure (network saturation). Due to this pressure, two problems occur. The first is the sustainable management of the infrastructure through application of a long term maintenance policy. The other difficulty involves the maintenance organisation, especially the organisation of the possession times, in the context of an increasing saturation of the network. In these two cases, the problem lies in the coordinated management of the development of the railway infrastructure, including maintenance and capacity issues. In this context, this thesis proposes four considerations distinguishing the important relationship between several elements of maintenance planning and the technical-economical constraints connected to the infrastructure capacity. The first consideration deals with structuring the problems of the infrastructure maintenance and its planning process. The second regards the evaluation of the risk of infrastructure not being available, including the financial risks involved with this non availability. The third is on the relationship between maintenance works and capacity issues. The fourth and final consideration focuses on the long-term maintenance needs and the economical implications on capacity especially with regard to the network saturation and the choice of the best strategy. The considerations lead to the creation of three models proposing some possible development strategies which might by time support the infrastructure manager with his tasks.