Track Maintenance Costs on Rail Transit Properties (2009)

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CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION PURPOSE This synthesis offers limited survey and interview response information on rail transit industry track maintenance costs and practices. BACKGROUND Track maintenance, in the broadest sense, is a product of resources, judgments, experience, skills, tools, and policies that are exercised in a range of service environments and within every conceivable type of organizational structure. Rail transit agencies’ maintenance costs vary widely among agencies, even though agency size, age, and operating conditions appear similar at first. This synthesis offers examples of bottom-up (needs-based) budgeting and attempts to identify factors that cause significant variation in costs. This synthesis’s assignment was to collect data from older and newer track structure designs, vehicles, and operating characteristics to report on factors that influence costs. Factors that influence maintenance costs include the following: • Track maintenance activities—listed and defined, • Labor and material costs, • Work windows, • Track inspection and maintenance policies, • Operating characteristics, • Budgeting and accounting practices, • Availability of capital and operating funds, and • Recordkeeping procedures. 6

This project reports on elements of track maintenance costs and maintenance practices in rail transit, and provides some indications of cost variations by regions and system length. More robust documentation of specific agency track maintenance costs and relationships to traffic are kept for a follow-on TCRP effort. REPORT ORDER The report is presented in the following order: • Summary • Literature review on track maintenance costs in transit • Transit agency survey data • Case studies • Conclusion. 7