Railway Disruption Timetable

Abstract

Abstract:
In case of railway disruption, traffic controllers are faced with the challenge of reducing delay propagation. One of the applied measures is to short-turn trains. Currently, predefined plans are used to manage traffic in case of disruption. These manually designed plans may not cover all possible disruption scenarios, and the solutions depend on the experience of the designer and might not be optimal. Also, some of these plans are infeasible because they disregard the time required for short-turning. This paper introduces a macroscopic rescheduling model formulated as a Mixed Integer Linear Programme that aims to support traffic controllers in case of complete blockages. The model computes the optimal short-turning pattern, which indicates the arrival train, departure service and platform track taking into account the short-turning time. In addition to the optimal short-turning pattern, the main contribution of the model is that it provides the possibility of short-turning at two stations instead of one. The model is applied on a part of Dutch railway network. The results show that the delay can be decreased by including two short-turning stations at the expense of more service cancellations. The traffic controllers should decide what is the best trade-off between cancelling and delaying services.