Gaming Rail Cargo Management

Sebastiaan A. Meijer, Igor S. Mayer, Jelle van Luipen and Natasha Weitenberg

Simulation & Gaming, 2012, vol. 43, issue 1, 85-101

Abstract: Stakeholders in the Netherlands’ rail cargo sector exhibit strategic behavior that causes irregularity and unpredictability in freight trains. This leads to the suboptimal use of scarce rail capacity. The authors present the results of a research project that used gaming to explore and validate alternative organizational methods for the management of rail cargo capacity with decision makers and subject matter experts from ProRail, the Netherlands’ railway infrastructure manager. Various scenarios for the organization of rail cargo capacity management were played out, tested, and extensively debriefed in three project phases. The gaming sessions demonstrated that open information sharing among stakeholders does not depend on the introduction of price mechanisms and is, indeed, a more effective way of managing capacity. The authors conclude that it is vital to introduce gaming gradually and build up organizational acceptance for this method. However, once acceptance has been achieved, gaming can generate valuable insight into strategic behavior and the performance of sociotechnical infrastructures.

Keywords: allocation; capacity management; complexity; construct validity; external validity; gaming phases; gaming simulation; market mechanism; open information sharing; organizational acceptance; planning alternatives; policy experimentation; policy making; policy research; ProRail; rail cargo; rail transport; real-world impact; scenarios; shared meaning; sociotechnical infrastructures; strategic behavior; trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:simgam:v:43:y:2012:i:1:p:85-101

DOI: 10.1177/1046878110382161

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