In railway systems, unexpected disturbances often make the planned train schedule infeasible. The real-time Railway Traffic Management Problem (rtRTMP) consists in applying retiming, reordering and rerouting of trains with the aim of minimizing delay propagation. In this work, we additionally consider the option of skipping stops to further reduce delays. We extend the RECIFE-MILP model, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming based heuristic for the rtRTMP with microscopic network description, by including stop-skipping. We evaluate the benefit and impact of this rescheduling measure on train and passenger delays in a suburban railway network.

The performance of railway operations depends highly on the quality of the railway timetable. In particular for dense railway networks it can be challenging to obtain a stable robust conflict-free and energy-efficient timetable with acceptable infrastructure occupation and short journey times. This paper presents a performance-based railway timetabling framework integrating timetable construction and evaluation on three levels: microscopic, macroscopic, and a corridor fine-tuning level, where each performance indicator is optimized or evaluated at the appropriate level. A modular implementation of the three-level framework is presented and demonstrated on a case study on the Dutch railway network illustrating the feasibility of this approach to achieve the highest timetabling design level.