Abstract
<jats:p>Railway track geometry degradation is a key determinant of infrastructure safety, ride comfort, maintenance demand, and lifecycle cost. This paper presents a measure-ment-based assessment of track geometry degradation on the analyzed section of railway line M300 in Romania, with emphasis on its practical use for maintenance prioritization. The study uses in-situ track-geometry inspection records collected by a track measuring vehicle (VMC) between 2020 and 2023 on a curved double-track sector, and evaluates the main geometric defect families used in railway practice, including alignment, gauge, longitudinal level, cross-level, and twist. In addition to conventional defect identification, severity grading, and penalty-point scoring, the paper introduces three mainte-nance-oriented decision-support tools: the Defect Severity Index (DSI), the Defect Recur-rence Factor (DRF), and a Maintenance Priority Matrix (MPM). These indicators are added to the existing workflow in order to compare inspection campaigns, identify persistent defect families, and translate measured degradation into maintenance priorities. The re-sults show that degradation is spatially selective and defect-family dependent, with cross-level and longitudinal-level defects dominating the cumulative penalty score. The DSI ranged from 467 points/km in September 2022 to 3183 points/km in March 2022, con-firming a non-linear degradation and recovery pattern. The proposed indices provide an interpretable extension of the existing penalty-point framework and support condi-tion-based maintenance planning on conventional railway lines.</jats:p>