The Norwegian National Rail Administration invites tenderers to a competition for a framework agreement with several service providers for work connected to analyses of railway capacity. The framework agreement is owned by the Capacity Section, which is under the Strategy and Community Department in JBV.
The hire and assignment contract will include the same work assignments. It applies for primarily the following work assignments:
— Develop long-term offer concepts:
An offer concept is defined as the desired revenue generating train offer in a defined area and is willingly used to review alternative long-term train offers. The offer concept is described through a line concept including stopping patterns, journey time (possibly targets for this), frequency (possibly fixed intervals), 24 hour distribution (trains per hour) and standard trains, including seat capacity (but not timetables). Offer concepts are the basis for capacity assessments, the identification of infrastructure needs and transport model calculations.
The year 2050 is used in the capacity section's work as a plan horizon for work that is to be carried out in the long-term. The long-term plan horizon is independent of the route model. The train offer is therefore discussed on a conceptual level i.e. in the form of an offer concept with the number of trains per hour as the most important parameter.
— Develop offer concepts and route models in the medium-term:
The assignment will primarily be to identify and analyse the infrastructure needs and other necessary measures to realise a route model. A route model is a description of a future train offer and is used for planning train offers in the medium-term. In railway terms, the period from 4-15 years into the future is seen as the medium-term. This is the period that can be reviewed and analysed for investments through the National Transport Plan. 2029 has been chosen as the plan horizon in the next governmental investment programme for transport infrastructure that starts in 2018 (NTP 2018-2029). A route model states the fixed route times and fixed crossings between periodical trains on single tracks, but it does not need to describe all the trains in detail and it can be more geographically limited.