The Life Cycles of Railway Systems

Within the last decades life cycle costing (LCC) has gained a crucial position in cost management within transport, railway or infrastructure companies. The method aims at balancing acquisition and maintenance costs to determine an optimized cost ratio.

To guarantee a successful outcome of such procedures an exceeding amount of data is necessary, a lack of this data however, causes difficulty.

Public Transport in Emerging and Developing Countries 

This applies especially in emerging and developing countries. Even though public transport is of particular importance, many corporations, most of them still owned by the state, do not have sufficient data or corresponding measurement systems. Up until now, investments have been taken according to their initial cost and value, without integrating maintenance costs into calculation. A proceeding project, carried out by MC Mobility Consultants in collaboration with PRASA (Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa), therefore promises an enormous application potential.

International Cooperation

Licorne, an exploratory project in collaboration with MC, PRASA and Stellenbosch University tries to examine challenges and possible solutions regarding an integrated LCC platform even with unsufficient data. It wants to find out which platforms there are for data exchange, how applicable these are for South Africa and how state decisions might influence the modeling of LCC.

Several workshops will be held in Sotuh Africa to examine various use cases within the context of South African rail operation. Integrated LCC methods shall be implemented and further developed.

Licorne is part of the Austrian funding programme „Beyond Europe“ of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). It aims at increasing RTI activities and international cooperation within Austrian companies and research institutions.