Railway Planning and Research

I’ve been working on railway projects all my professional life starting with early Caltrain planning studies in the 1980s. Since then I’ve been a project manager for Caltrain planning projects, a railway researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) and the St. Poelten University of Applied Sciences, and worked as a consultant to Emch Berger AG Bern on projects including the Denmark ETCS program.

Caltrain

In the 1980s I helped on several of the San Francisco Peninsula rail planning studies while working for Wilbur Smith Associates. The question was whether to extend BART or rebuild Caltrain. Unfortunately BART always had much more political clout and the result was the BART San Francisco Airport extension.

As a candidate for the BART Board in 1992 my position was that BART should build an intermodal station with Caltrain and the airport people mover outside the airport. This would have ensured high quality connections. Unfortunately BART and San Mateo county choose a convoluted plan to take BART directly into the airport. The plan almost bankrupted San Mateo county and the quality of service, especially for connections to Caltrain is terrible.

In 1995 I went to work for Caltrain as project manager for the Downtown San Francisco Extension EIR/EIS. We developed an excellent plan with the help of extensive public involvement. Unfortunately in 1997, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown vetoed the project. He changed his mind several years later, but the EIS/EIR was not finished until 2005. The Transbay Terminal was rebuilt in 2019 with a “box” for Caltrain and high speed rail. The tunnel between the Fourth and King streets station and Transbay Terminal will likely need to wait for funding from the high speed rail project.

After the original Caltrain EIR/EIS project was killed I worked on other Caltrain planning projects including a connection to the SF Airport people mover, a plan for bringing Caltrain up to a state of good repair (which was drastically needed), and a new maintenance facility for Caltrain in San Jose.

ETH Zurich

I worked at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich until 2007 on several railway research and communications projects including the Swiss Metro study, the OpenTrack railway simulation program user manual, railway planning in Zurich and high speed rail. A full set of references is below.

Banedanmark ETCS

I worked on the Banedanmark European Train Control System (ETCS) signalling programme between 2015 and 2018 as a consultant to Emch Berger AG Bern. I assisted the team developing an advanced railway traffic management system (TMS) in conceptual design and communications. We wrote several papers describing the idea of an advanced TMS and how it was being developed at Banedanmark. See references below for links to these papers.

Publications

Railways Need Disruptive Innovation; Andrew Nash; APTA Speedlines – Issue 33 – March 2022.

Reducing Delays on High-density Railway Lines: The London-Shenfield Case Study; Medeossi, Giorgio and Andrew Nash; Transportation Research Record; Online First, June 12, 2020; DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0361198120921159.

A Framework for Capturing the Business Benefits of Railway Digitalsation; Nash, Andrew, Felix Laube, and Samuel Roos; Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2020.

Using Banedanmark’s Traffic Management System to Develop Concept Timetable 2030 – Nash, Andrew, Samuel Roos, and Bernd Schittenhelm; TRB Annual Meeting 2017.

Advanced TMS will improve operating efficiency – Laube, Felix and Nash, Andrew; In Railway Gazette International; December 2016; pp. 35-37.

ETCS: The foundation for efficient and attractive railways – Laube, Felix and Andrew Nash; Rolling Stock & Technology, Number 231; pp. 2-9; December 2015; Published version (Japanese).

Structure and Simulation Evaluation of an Integrated Real-Time Rescheduling System for Railway Networks – Lüthi, Marco, Giorgio Medeossi, Andrew Nash; Journal of Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer Netherlands; Volume 9, Number 1, March, 2009; pp 103-121.

The potential for saving energy by more precisely calculating station dwell times on commuter rail service – Schöbel, Andreas, Bernhard Rüger, Nash, Andrew, Jürgen Zajicek, Martin Turk and Hartmut Dannenberg; International Association of Railway Operations Research 3rd International Seminar on Railway Operations Modelling and Analysis: RailZurich2009 Conference; February 2009; Zurich.

Can Information Technology Help Rail Play a Greater Role in Preventing Climate Change? – Nash, Andrew, Ulrich Weidmann and Marco Lüthi; Transportation Research Record #2139; US Transportation Research Board, Washington DC, 2009, pp 133-141. SLIDES

Increasing Rail Demand by Improving Multi Modal Information and Ticketing: Results of the Night & Flight Case Study – Sauter-Servaes, Thomas, and Andrew Nash; Transportation Research Record #2117; US Transportation Research Board, Washington DC, 2009, pp 7-13.

Applying Low Cost Airline Pricing Strategies on European Railroads – Sauter-Servaes, Thomas and Andrew Nash; Transportation Research Record #1995; Transportation Research Board, Washington D.C.; pp 1-8; 2007.
SLIDES

A Proposed Infrastructure Pricing Methodology for Mixed-Use Rail Networks – Calvo, Francisco Javier, Juan de Ona and Andrew Nash; Transportation Research Record #1995; Transportation Research Board, Washington D.C.; pp 9-16; 2007. SLIDES

Assessing the Feasibility of Transport Mega-Projects: Swissmetro European Market Study – Nash, Andrew, Ulrich Weidmann, Stefan Buchmueller and Markus Reider; Transportation Research Record #1995; Transportation Research Board, Washington D.C.; pp 17-26; 2007. SLIDES

Increasing Schedule Reliability on Zurich’s S-Bahn Through Computer Analysis and Simulation – Nash, Andrew, Ulrich Weidmann, Stefan Buechmuller, and Stefan Bollinger; Transportation Research Record #1955; Transportation Research Board, Washington D.C.; pp 17-25; 2007. SLIDES

Introducing New Commuter Rail Service on Busy Routes – Case Study: Stadtbahn Zug – Nash, Andrew and Ulrich Weidmann; TRB Annual Meeting 2006. SLIDES

Optimizing railway timetables using OpenTimeTable – Nash, A. and M. Ullius; In: Allan, J., R.J. Hill, C.A. Brebbia, G. Sciutto, S. Sone (eds.). Computers in Railways IX, WIT Press, Southampton, 2004, pp. 637-646.

Railroad simulation using OpenTrack – Nash, A. and Daniel Huerlimann; In: Allan, J., R.J. Hill, C.A. Brebbia, G. Sciutto, S. Sone (eds.). Computers in Railways IX, WIT Press, Southampton, 2004, pp. 45-54.

RailML – a standard data interface for railroad applications – Nash, A., D. Huerlimann, J. Schuette and V.P. Krauss; In: Allan, J., R.J. Hill, C.A. Brebbia, G. Sciutto, S. Sone (eds.). Computers in Railways IX, WIT Press, Southampton, 2004, pp. 233-240.

Best Practices in Shared-Use High-Speed Rail Systems – Nash, Andrew; Mineta Transportation Institute, San Jose State University; Report 02-02, June 2003.

Caltrain Rapid Rail Plan – Nash, Andrew; Transportation Research Record #1667; Transportation Research Board, Washington D.C.; 1999.

Public Decision Making for the CalTrain Downtown San Francisco Extension Project – Nash, Andrew; Transportation Research Record #1571, March 1997.