Optimal inter-area coordination of train rescheduling decisions

Railway dispatchers reschedule trains in real-time in order to limit the propagation of disturbances and to regulate traffic in their respective dispatching areas by minimizing the deviation from the off-line timetable. However, the decisions taken in one area may influence the quality and even the feasibility of train schedules in the other...

Centralized versus distributed systems to reschedule trains in two dispatching areas

Railway dispatchers are in charge of rescheduling trains during operations in order to limit propagation of disturbances occurring in real-time. To help the dispatchers in such task, an advanced decision support system, ROMA (Railway traffic Optimization by Means of Alternative graphs), has been recently implemented to optimize railway traffic...

Effectiveness of dynamic reordering and rerouting of trains in a complicated and densely occupied station area

Railway traffic experiences disturbances during operations while dispatchers need actions to restore feasibility and limit spreading of delays through the network. To help the dispatcher in such task, the dispatching support tool ROMA (Railway traffic Optimization by Means of Alternative graphs) has been designed and implemented. We report on...

An Advanced Real-Time Train Dispatching System for Minimizing the Propagation of Delays in a Dispatching Area Under Severe Disturbances

In highly utilized rail networks, as in the Netherlands, conflicts and subsequent train delays propagate considerably in time and space during operations. In order to realistically forecast and minimize delay propagation, there is a need to extend short-term traffic planning up to several hours. On the other hand, as the magnitude of the time...

The effectiveness of static implications in real-time railway traffic management

We study a real-time railway traffic management problem. It consists in adjusting train timetables in order to restore feasibility when unforeseen events in the network make unfeasible the off-line generated timetable. The problem can be formulated as a huge job-shop problem with blocking constraints, which has to be solved within strict time...