A framework for defining a sustainability rating system for railway track-beds

Bressi, Sara; Di Mino, Gaetano; Lo Presti, Davide

Abstract

Railways perform a significant role in the transportation system and they have relevant environmental, economic and social impacts. They are currently engineered optimizing every singular aspect rather than considering a broader system for improving the sustainability of the overall infrastructure. Thus, it is necessary to promote an effort to define a global sustainability framework for conceiving the design, construction and management of railway infrastructure. The Sustainable Rating System (SRS) proposed in this paper is a tool under development that evaluates different alternatives of railway track-bed structure. Inspired by similar efforts in the field of road engineering such as Greenroads and Greenpave, this SRS aims to be the first entirely dedicated to support railway engineers, designers and managers in taking more responsible decisions with regards to the sustainable design and maintenance of railway track-beds. It is based on a library that examines different solutions and treatments for each element of the trackbed and a table of points that assigns different scores to the different alternatives. To achieve the highest score in terms of sustainability it is necessary to maximize the points assigned to every element. In other words, the maximum score requires adopting best practices leading to more sustainable choices such as exploiting the use of recycled materials, reducing the use of non-renewable resources, the energy consumption, air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. © Copyright 2017 ASME.

Citation

Bressi, S., Di Mino, G., & Lo Presti, D. (2017, April). A framework for defining a sustainability rating system for railway track-beds. Presented at 2017 Joint Rail Conference, JRC 2017, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

• Presentation Conference Type: Edited Proceedings
• Conference Name: 2017 Joint Rail Conference, JRC 2017
• Start Date: Apr 4, 2017
• End Date: Apr 7, 2017
• Acceptance Date: Jan 18, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Apr 4, 2017
• Publication Date: Apr 4, 2016
• Deposit Date: Dec 10, 2018
• Publisher: American Society of Mechanical Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Article Number: JRC2017-2232, V001T07A002
• Book Title: 2017 Joint Rail Conference
• ISBN: 9780791850718
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1115/JRC2017-2232
• Keywords: Indicators; Railway; Rating; Sustainability assessment; Track-bed; Energy utilization; Gas emissions; Greenhouse gases; Indicators (instruments); Railroad tracks; Railroads; Rails; Rating; Sustainable development; Transportation; Global sustainability; Non-renewable resource; Railway; Railway infrastructure; Recycled materials; Sustainability assessment; Track-bed; Transportation system; Railroad transportation
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1304938
• Publisher URL: http://proceedings.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=2645438