A data-driven approach for quantifying the resilience of railway networks

Disruptions occur frequently in railway networks, requiring timetable adjustments, while causing serious delays and cancellations. However, little is known about the performance dynamics during disruptions nor the extent to which the resilience curve applies in practice. This paper presents a data-driven quantification approach for an ex-post...

Promising solutions for railway operations to cope with future challenges — Tackling COVID and beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a dramatic effect on the mobility habits of both passengers and freight in the rail sector. Since the relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions worldwide, rail transport has been revitalised gradually. However, the new normal emerges with unprecedented issues, such as changed travel behaviour, lost profits, and a...

Resilience assessment of railway networks: Combining infrastructure restoration and transport management

During railways operations, unplanned events might occur which can result in rail traffic being heavily impacted. The paper proposes a passenger-centred resilience assessment for disruption scenarios which consist of multiple simultaneous disruptions. It combines train traffic operations, passenger flows and network restoration. To evaluate...

Estimating impacts of covid19 on transport capacity in railway networks

Due to the covid19 crisis, public transport (PT) systems are facing new challenges. Regarding restrictive measures such as physical distancing and the successive returning of passengers after the “intelligent lockdown”, significant lack of transport capacity can be expected. In this paper, the transport capacity of a PT network is assessed,...

Scheduling multimodal alternative services for managing infrastructure maintenance possessions in railway networks

Highly utilized railway networks require regular infrastructure maintenance. Different track sections often need to be closed for entire days to carry out engineering works, which makes the regular timetables no longer feasible and thus adjusted railway services and temporary alternative services need to be planned. We introduce the...

Resilience in railway transport systems: a literature review and research agenda

Critical infrastructure networks, such as transport and power networks, are essential for the functioning of a society and economy. The rising transport demand increases the congestion in railway networks and thus they become more interdependent and more complex to operate. Also, an increasing number of disruptions due to system failures as...

Passenger-centered vulnerability assessment of railway networks

The performance and behaviour of critical infrastructure in case of disruptions is an important topic and we are still lacking of insights. Due to disruptions, infrastructure becomes unavailable and may force the trains and passengers to adapt. In this paper, we introduce a problem of railway network vulnerability from the perspective of...