In this paper, organic materials are studied for environmental purposes. First, recycled materials, such as anti-vibration blocks made of SBR track pads are used for reducing vibration of railway as a means to develop. It is found that low density and porous rubber blocks have suitable properties for reducing vibration and exhibit good performance. Second, an elemental analysis is carried out to evaluate environmental consciousness and development of desirable material in the future. Based on this result, desirable concepts of future materials, such as making simple components and reducing heavy metals, are proposed.

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Recently, environmental protection has become one of the most critical concerns in the global scale. Currently, it is widely recognized that life cycle assessment (LCA) is a very effective instrument to quantitatively evaluate environmental impact of various products across their whole lifecycle. LCA itself is not yet established as a well defined method, but already finding a wide range of applications in electric appliances, automobiles and other industrial products. We conducted a basic survey for LCA of Shinkansen vehicles, as a case study for the railway system. As a result of this survey, we could obtain useful knowledge for applying LCA to the railway.

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As environmental preservation becomes an increasingly important issue on a global scale, railway enterprises are also required to assess and reduce environmental loads of materials used in railway systems. Such loads are mainly related to vehicles and facilities. In this study, we estimated the environmental load of railway facilities, and conducted a case study on four types of cross tie (wood, concrete, synthetic and steel) by applying the LCA method at the production stage. As a result, we found that CO₂ emission from total ties in Japan was about 55,000 tons per year.

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If any innovative electric brake is developed which is able to control speed to zero (hereinafter referred to as the zero-speed electric brake), it will bring us numerous merits; By the use of the zero speed electric brake, development of an automatic train control for more effective deceleration and of a lighter mechanical brake system, will be enabled, including greater easiness of maintenance. To realize stable control of the zero speed electric brake in the low speed range where any speed sensor cannot detect speed accurately, it is necessary to develop a new control algorithm. Therefore, we are now developing new halting algorithms for the zero-speed electric brake ; These algorithms are called "Torque Pattern Control" and "Gradient Estimating Feed Forward Torque Pattern Control", and as part of the development, we have already tested them on the specimen vehicles which run on the rolling stock test stand.
For this project, we implemented running tests in Takatori Rolling Stock Works in JR-WEST. The results thereof show that the pneumatic brake system may work creating brake force to some extent, thus enabling to halt the vehicle at all ranges of velocity in the initially charged pressure of the pneumatic brake. By using the initially charged pressure effectively, it is found that the vehicle may halt even with an approximate estimation of the gradient or without estimation. From this, we are convinced that a zero speed electric brake can be put into practical use easily in the future.

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In the metropolitan areas of Japan, a critical issue is the improvement of train transportation service including alleviating congestion and reduction of commuting time for traveling to work or school. Therefore, we have developed a train transportation simulation system as a simple means of quantitatively evaluating plans for improving various train transportation services. In addition, since evaluation of congestion is also required in this simulation, we conducted a questionnaire survey regarding congestion. This paper gives an overview of the simulation system we developed, and the results we obtained regarding analysis and modeling of congestion.

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A case study of the accidents of visually impaired persons' falling from a railway platform was conducted. In this study, 15 subjects were interviewed in 38 cases. This research revealed that (1) 89% of the cases we surveyed occurred while they were moving along a platform; (2) the walking distance before the fall was less than 20 meters in 70% of the studied cases; (3) 47% of the victims fell while using a white cane on a platform paved with textured blocks; (4) typical causes were inappropriately designed or laid blocks, and victims' overhabituation; (5) 58% were helped back to the platform after fall (not returning by themselves) and (6) 16% suffered broken bones or were wounded seriously.

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Railways have a variety of environmental issues, such as noise, vibration, chemicals, heavy metals, NOx, SOx, CO₂, waste and so on. In order to solve these problems, there are five categories of engineering subjects, namely, analysis of pollutants, assessment of environment, cleanup of pollutants, and preservation, harmonization, and improvement of environment. Several technical themes are also connected with these five subjects, such as life cycle assessment (LCA), recycling, environment conscious materials (ECO-Materials), energy saving, environmental management system, including ISO14001/JIS Q 14001 and so on. This paper discusses not only the engineering and technical aspects but also the economy, culture/tradition, public communications and mission of railways. From these investigations, sound environments can be obtained and finally "Sustainable Development" of our railways is achieved.

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In 1995, Railway Technical Research Institute set up a project aiming at developing technology useful for improving urban railway transportation. In this project, four major areas are covered, namely, improvement of demand forecasting technology, analysis and improvement of station building structures, train operation and signaling and rolling stock. In this review, the background and the outline of the project is presented, together with short introductions of some of its major research results.

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