Microscopic delay management

Abstract

Optimization models for railway traffic rescheduling in the last decade tend to develop along two main streams. On the one hand, train scheduling models strive to incorporate any relevant detail of the railway infrastructure having an impact on the feasibility and quality of the solutions from the viewpoint of infrastructure managers. On the other hand, delay management models focus on the impact of rescheduling decisions on the quality of service perceived by the passengers, and in the interest of the train operating company. Models in the first stream are mainly microscopic, while models in the second stream are mainly macroscopic. This paper aims at merging these two streams of research by developing microscopic delay management approaches. A variety of solution algorithms are proposed, that compute a solution to the studied problem; the obtained solutions correspond to Nash equilibria of the strategic interaction of the players (train operating company and infrastructure manager). Computational results based on a real-world Dutch railway network quantify the trade-off between the minimization of train delays and passenger travel times, and show that good compromise solutions can be found within a limited computation time.