EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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3788. Incremental timetabling for handling Temporary Capacity Restrictions

Invited abstract in session MD-54: Europe's Rail MOTIONAL: Algorithms for railway planning, stream Public Transport Optimization.

Monday, 14:30-16:00
Room: S01 (building: 101)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Giorgio Sartor
Mathematics and Cybernetics, SINTEF Digital
2. Carlo Mannino
SINTEF
3. Bjørnar Luteberget
Mathematics and Cybernetics, SINTEF Digital
4. Oddvar Kloster
Mathematics and Cybernetics, SINTEF

Abstract

In railways, Temporary Capacity Restrictions (TCRs), such as track closures and speed reductions, can make it very difficult to operate trains according to the timetable. Depending on the severity of the TCR, the timetable might require relatively simple repairing actions (e.g., retiming, resequencing) or major modifications (e.g., cancellations, short-turning, rerouting). In general, the objective for the new timetable is to be as similar as possible to the original, but the precise definition is based on opinions and experience from the route planners, making it difficult to formalize. In contrast to most of the current literature that tries to approximate this objective, we propose the following iterative process: 1) route planners use an interactive GUI to sketch a new (potentially infeasible) reference timetable, and 2) mathematical programming is used to find a feasible timetable that is closest to the reference one. Step 1 and 2 can be repeated until the route planners are satisfied. We call this method Incremental Timetabling, to highlight the fact that route planners can iteratively steer the timetable towards the desired one, while our model simply takes care of its feasibility. We present an application of this procedure to parts of the Norwegian and Italian Railways.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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