Assessment on Operational Management of Railway Infrastructure: A Case Study of Ethiopia – Djibouti Standard Gauge Railway.

Abstract

The Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway is a new standard gauge international railway that serves as the backbone of the new Ethiopian National Railway Network. It is jointly owned by both the Djiboutian and Ethiopian governments. It is owned by the governments of Ethiopia (75% share) and Djibouti (25% share). The main objective of the study was to have assessment on operational management of Ethiopia- Djibouti Standard Gauge Railway Infrastructure. The Research Methodology for the study of assessment on operational management of EDR infrastructure used quantitative data. These data include: designed questionnaire data, and field observation. During data sampling and collection process, all-important samples would be taken from pre-determined sources (population). Important representative samples taken from ERC and EDR head office Managers and consultants in addition from EDR: construction office, maintenance office, traffic office and Employee at three EDR railway stations. The total sample size was 115. All the respondents were complete and return the questionnaires. The designed questionnaire data was treated quantitatively. Representative samples from the assigned population were used to select respondents using purposive sampling. The collected data was organized in quantitative form and it was analyzed using SPSS (Version 26”) to perform quantitative data analysis. The results of this study showed that rail damage and railway track subgrade failure have very high impact on the causes of this railway infrastructure failure. Maintenance office applies all types of track maintenance categories of railway track. Train risk management systems are present at medium level in our country. Majority of traffic problems occur at rail crossing. Challenges that are expecting for future planned expansions of railway infrastructure in our country can be: lack of skilled manpower, financial problems or budgeting, and lack of peace and stability in the country. Important pints for further investigations are: Solutions for future planned expansions of railway infrastructure problems in our country, extent at which safety management systems of rail way infrastructure present in the country, and best remedial measures that help our country to overcome railway track subgrade failure to insure operational management of railway infrastructure problems.