Robust Shunting in a Dynamic Environment: Deriving Proactive Schedules from a Reactive Policy

When trains are not actively traveling on the main rail network, they to be parked and prepared for their next journey. This is a complex problem, involving several interconnected subproblems. Additionally, there is uncertainty in this environment which can render initial plans infeasible during their execution. To ensure trains are able to...

Inferring Robust Plans with a Rail Network Simulator

Over 700 trains in the Netherlands are used daily for passenger transportation. Train operations involve tasks like parking, recombination, cleaning, and maintenance, which take place in shunting yards. The train unit shunting problem (TUSP) is a complex planning problem made more difficult by uncertainties such as delays. Most existing...

Applying the Pebble Motion problem: studying the feasibility of the Train Unit Shunting Problem

Shunting yards are the locations where trains, which are not included in the train schedule at a certain time, are parked until they are required again. Managing the parking of the trains such that all trains can leave at the desired time is a complicated task, and results in the problem formally known as the Train Unit Shunting Problem (TUSP)....

Train Unit Shunting Problem, a Multi-Agent Pathfinding approach

The Train Unit Shunting Problem (TUSP) is a well studied problem within the NS (Dutch Railways). TUSP is a problem where trains have to be routed on a shunting yard such that maintenance tasks can be performed and no collisions occur. Furthermore, incoming trains have to be matched to outgoing trains, since trains of the same type can be used...