Joint Seminar by Khue Nguyen and Danny Zhu

Solving Train Timetabling Adjustment Problems with Integrated Track Assignments 

Khue Nguyen (Erasmus School of Economics)

Railway systems are essential to modern transportation, yet frequent construction works often necessitate timetable adjustments to ensure service quality. 

This study tackles the Train Timetabling Adjustment Problem with integrated track assignments in response to planned maintenance. Building upon existing models that primarily operate at a macroscopic level, we propose a mesoscopic approach and extend the standard event-activity network, allowing for assigning tracks, modelling train short-turning and track capacity directly, and accounting for partial open track possessions which are often overlooked in previous studies. 

The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model and tested on real-world instances with multiple possession scenarios. Results indicate that the model can find optimal alternative timetables and feasible train routings within reasonable times. 

Iterative Two-Stage Stochastic Programming Approach for Real-Time Rolling Stock Rescheduling Under Uncertainty

Danny Zhu (Erasmus School of Economics)

On the day of operations, disruptions can occur on the railway network, which requires the rolling stock plan to be adjusted. 

In this paper, we consider the problem of rolling stock rescheduling with disruptions for which information about the duration, location and severity is uncertain and becomes available gradually. We propose an iterative two-stage stochastic programming approach to solve this problem. 

The approach takes into account a variety of disruption scenarios and iteratively creates an interim rolling stock schedule that can be operated until the next information update. Computational experiments are conducted on instances of the Dutch railway network.

Coordinators

• Ruben van Beesten
• Ece Karakoyun
• Olga Kuryatnikova