Online prediction of arrival and departure times in each station for passenger trains using machine learning methods

Abstract

The prediction of delays and their reduction in all modes of passenger transportation, especially rail transportation, is of great importance and annually attracts the attention of many researchers. Train delays can be anticipated by predicting the arrival times of trains at stations. In this paper, a train operated by Raja Company, which travels daily on the Tehran-Mashhad route, has been investigated. This train route consists of 50 stations, of which five main stations, including Tehran, Garmsar, Semnan, Shahrud, and Mashhad, have been selected to predict the train's arrival and departure times at each of these stations. For this purpose, data related to the train timetable and the operations carried out at these five main stations over three years from 2018 to 2020 have been collected. Then, modeling was conducted to predict real-time arrival and departure times for each of these stations. Artificial neural networks, random forest regression, gradient boosting regression, and extreme gradient boosting regression were used for prediction modeling. After evaluating these models, the approach that yielded the best results based on the experimental data was selected for predicting the arrival and departure times at each station.