Energy Consumption Optimization in Urban Rail Transport (Case Study: Tehran Subway)

Necessity and importance of energy in state economic, social, and political structure and stability of and terminable fossil resources have been centerpiece of attention to energy issue in last few years. Urban railway, as one of the main pillars of urban economy, has increased the importance of this sector based on mass transit with advantages such as economic savings in fuel consumption, preventing air pollution, reaching environmental standards, and creating social culture and discipline, and it has been followed by continuation and development of rail transport sector in the country. In this research, optimization of energy consumption in urban rail transport has been investigated and some strategies have been presented in this regard. For this purpose, 160 metro experts, who had direct relation with establishment and implementation of energy management system in Tehran Metro Operation Company, were considered as population. By using Morgan table, 113 of them were selected as sample by simple random sampling. To collect data, library ad field studies, interview with related experts, and researcher-made questionnaire containing 22 questions were used. To analyze data, SPSS software, exploratory factor analysis, and Freidman test were used. In order to identify current situation in energy management (based on ISO 50001 standard), general measures Tehran Metro Operation Company in current situation, including contract demands of electricity consumption were detected. However, by using factor analysis, 11 factors were identified and ranked in the field of energy consumption optimization. Appropriate information ranked the highest and encouraging suggested pland ranked the least.