Conflict-free train path planning using ATO timing points

Automatic Train Operation (ATO) is a technology to support or automate train driving for increasing service punctuality, energy efficiency and rail infrastructure capacity. Conflict-free train path planning is crucial to the effective deployment of ATO, which allows ATO-equipped trains to operate according to schedule with different train...

Improving the Utilization of Regenerative Energy and Shaving Power Peaks by Railway Timetable Adjustment

Employing regenerative braking in trains contributes to reducing the amount of energy used, especially when applied to commuter trains and to those used on very dense suburban networks. This paper presents a method to fine-tune the periodic timetable to improve the utilization of regenerative energy and to shave power peaks while maintaining...

Modelling and analysis of Virtual Coupling with dynamic safety margin considering risk factors in railway operations

To address the ever-growing rail transport demand, the concept of Virtual Coupling train operations is gradually gaining ground within the railway industry. Thanks to a Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication, trains could be separated by less than an absolute braking distance and even form connected platoons to increase capacity at bottlenecks....

Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient for High-Speed Train Trajectory Optimization

This paper proposes a novel train trajectory optimization approach for high-speed railways. We restrict our attention to single train operation scenarios with different scheduled/rescheduled running times aiming at generating optimal train recommended trajectories in real time, which can ensure punctuality and energy efficiency of train...

A literature review of Artificial Intelligence applications in railway systems

Nowadays it is widely accepted that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is significantly influencing a large number of domains, including railways. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review of the current state-of-the-art of AI in railway transport. In particular, we analysed and discussed papers from a holistic railway perspective,...

Assessment of architectures for Automatic Train Operation driving functions

Automatic Train Operation (ATO) is well-known in urban railways and gets increasing interest from mainline railways at present to improve capacity and punctuality. A main function of ATO is the train trajectory generation that specifies the speed profile over the given running route considering the timetable and the characteristics of the...

A Matheuristic for the Integrated Disruption Management of Traffic, Passengers and Stations in Urban Railway Lines

In big cities, the metro lines usually face great pressure caused by huge passengers demand, especially during peak hours. When disruptions occur, passengers accumulate quickly at stations. It is of great importance for dispatchers to take passenger flow control into consideration for the traffic management to ensure passengers' safety and to...

Pseudospectral optimal train control

In the last decade, pseudospectral methods have become popular for solving optimal control problems. Pseudospectral methods do not need prior knowledge about the optimal control structure and are thus very flexible for problems with complex path constraints, which are common in optimal train control, or train trajectory optimization....

A multi-state train-following model for the analysis of virtual coupling railway operations

The increasing need for capacity has led the railway industry to explore next generation signalling concepts such as Virtual Coupling which takes moving-block operations further by separating trains by a relative braking distance, like cars on the road. By means of a Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication architecture trains can move in a...

Reinforcement Learning in Railway Timetable Rescheduling

Real-time railway traffic management is important for the daily operations of railway systems. It predicts and resolves operational conflicts caused by events like excessive passenger boardings/alightings. Traditional optimization methods for this problem are restricted by the size of the problem instances. Therefore, this paper proposes a...

Train trajectory optimization for improved on-time arrival under parametric uncertainty

In this paper we study the problem of computing train trajectories in an uncertain environment in which the values of some system parameters are difficult to determine. Specifically, we consider uncertainty in traction force and train resistance, and their impact on travel time and energy consumption. Our ultimate goal is to be able to...

Multi-train trajectory optimization for energy-efficient timetabling

This paper proposes a novel approach for energy-efficient timetabling by adjusting the running time allocation of given timetables using train trajectory optimization. The approach first converts the arrival and departure times to time window constraints in order to relax the given timetable. Then a train trajectory optimization method is...

A multi-state train-following model for the analysis of Virtual Coupling railway operations

The increasing need for capacity has led the railway industry to explore next generation signalling concepts such as Virtual Coupling which takes moving-block operations further by separating trains by a relative braking distance, like cars on the road. By means of a Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication architecture trains can move in a...

Train Trajectory Optimization with Signalling Constraints (PPT)