A Simulation-Based Framework for Assessing Capacity, Service Quality, and Profitability Trade-off in Railway Corridors

Abstract

As railway networks are requested to accommodate higher traffic volumes, infrastructure managers face a fundamental trade-off between throughput, timetable robustness, and economic performance. Adding trains can increase access-charge revenue, but it can also reduce recovery margins and amplify the propagation of delays, thereby increasing performance-related penalties. This paper presents a mesoscopic simulation-based framework for assessing that trade-off at corridor level by integrating traffic-density scenarios, conflict-resolution logic, and a simplified financial evaluation based on Track Access Charges (TAC) and Performance Regimes (PR). Using an assumed corridor and Swedish pricing parameters as an illustrative case, the analysis shows that net economic performance is non-linear with respect to traffic density: beyond a certain utilization range, secondary delays increase faster than revenue, reducing net profit. The contribution is therefore methodological: to demonstrate how operational simulation and financial assessment can be combined to identify traffic-density ranges that remain economically robust under stochastic disturbances.