Railway Network Timetabling and Dynamic Traffic Management

The paper discusses the current state of research concerning railway network timetabling and traffic management. Timetable effectiveness is governed by frequency, regularity, accurate running, recovery and layover times, as well as minimal headway, buffer times and waiting times. Analytic (queuing) models and stochastic microsimulation are predominantly used for estimation of waiting times and capacity consumption anlong corridors and in stations, while combinatorial models and stability analysis are suitable for network timetable optimisation. Efficient traffic management can be achieved by real time monitoring, fusion, analysis and rescheduling of railway traffic in case of disturbances. Real time simulation, optimisation and impact evaluation of dispatching measures can improve the effectiveness of rescheduling and traffic management. The display of dynamic signal and track occupancy data in driver cabins, as RouteLint developed by ProRail, can support anticipative actions of the driver in order to reduce knock on delays and increase throughput.