For dense railway lines, timetables are commonly designed periodically to provide regular services. However, such timetables may lead to many low-occupancy departures and make it inefficient to a railway company. We combine the features of periodic timetabling with those of demand-responsive timetabling design for a bidirectional rail transit line considering rolling stock circulation. A mixed-integer programming model with the objective of minimizing total passenger waiting time and weighted total train travel time is formulated and a three-phase heuristic algorithm is developed. Five performance indicators, namely, total train travel time, passenger average waiting time, event time deviation, event frequency deviation, and train connection time are introduced to evaluate the performance of the model. A case study on Jinshan railway corridor in Shanghai demonstrates that the proposed demand responsive periodic timetabling model can reduce passengers’ waiting time and keep periodicity in the meantime with short computational time.@en