Delay management determines which connections should be maintained in case of a delayed feeder train. Recent delay management models incorporate the limited capacity of the railway infrastructure. These models introduce headway constraints to make sure that safety regulations are satisfied. Unfortunately, these headway constraints cannot capture the full details of the railway infrastructure, especially within the stations. We therefore propose an iterative optimization approach that iteratively solves a macroscopic delay management model on the one hand, and a microscopic train scheduling model on the other hand. The macroscopic model determines which connections to maintain and proposes a disposition timetable. This disposition timetable is then validated microscopically for a bottleneck station of the network, proposing a feasible schedule of railway operations. This schedule reduces delay propagation and thereby minimizes passenger delays. We evaluate our iterative optimization framework using real-world instances around Utrecht in the Netherlands.

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Erasmus School of Economics
hdl.handle.net/1765/32416
Econometric Institute Research Papers
Report / Econometric Institute, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Erasmus School of Economics

Dollevoet, T., Corman, F., D'Ariano, A., & Huisman, D. (2012). An Iterative Optimization Framework for Delay Management and Train Scheduling (No. EI 2012-10). Report / Econometric Institute, Erasmus University Rotterdam (pp. 1–23). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/32416