Disruption handling in large railway networks

Abstract

This paper on disruption handling in large railway networks is from the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer System Design and Operation in Railways and Other Transit Systems, held in Beijing, China, in 2010. The authors first outline how railway traffic is operated according to a detailed off-line plan of operations, specifying for each train its path through the network plus arrival and departure times at its scheduled stops. During daily operations disturbances upset the plan and dispatchers make changes in order to keep operations feasible and to limit delay propagation. The authors then consider how to support dispatchers in the management of infrastructure disruptions in a large network divided into dispatching areas of limited size. They discuss situations of seriously disturbed traffic conditions on double track railway lines where some block sections of one track are unavailable for traffic, e.g., due to a temporary track blockage. Then, given a disruption resolution scenario (computed offline), they implement an advanced decision support system, ROMA (Railway traffic Optimization by Means of Alternative graphs). ROMA is used in order to compute efficient train schedules at the level of signal control, along with detailed performance indicators. Alternative dispatching solutions can be computed in a few minutes. The paper includes a test case that evaluates the use of ROMA on a large Dutch railway network with heavy traffic. The test case includes the computation of dispatching solutions for a given set of scenarios and their evaluation in terms of travel times, waiting times and train delays.