EURO 2024 Copenhagen
Abstract Submission

EURO-Online login

1476. A MILP model to improve the robustness of a railway timetable in a bottleneck area: a case study in Belgium

Invited abstract in session WA-51: Timetabling 2, stream Public Transport Optimization.

Wednesday, 8:30-10:00
Room: M5 (building: 101)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Inneke Van Hoeck
Institute for Mobility - CIB, KU Leuven
2. Pieter Vansteenwegen
Institute for Mobility - CIB, KU Leuven

Abstract

Robustness is a crucial concept in the railway timetabling problem. It is often related to the ability of a timetable to absorb small delays and avoid the propagation of these delays. We propose a MILP model to improve the robustness of an existing microscopic timetable in a complex and heavily used part of the network. The objective is to maximize the buffer times between each pair of trains, leading to a good spreading in time of the trains. The timetable can be improved by adapting the timing and the routing of the trains. Since only a part of a larger network is considered, the allowed deviation from the initial timetable is limited such that the newly proposed timetable does not cause conflicts outside of the considered area. Depending on which properties the resulting timetable should have, certain constraints can easily be added by the user. Due to the flexibility of the proposed model, it can also be used to analyze and optimize alternative scenarios and provide more insight into the robustness of the timetable. The model is applied to a case study of a bottleneck area of the Belgian railway network, located just outside of Brussels. The traffic in this area is very heterogeneous, with InterCity, local, peak-hour and high-speed trains. The spreading objective is improved with 18% compared to the current situation, thus leading to a more robust timetable. Additionally, alternative scenarios, related to extending a line, adding trains and cancelling trains, are studied.

Keywords

Status: accepted

Back to the list of papers