Author(s)

L. Chen, F. Schmid, B. Ning, C. Roberts & T. Tang

Abstract

On main line railways, bottleneck sections in urban area usually have high intensity traffic flows because of trains converging from different origins through portal junctions. As a result, a small delay to one train can cause long knock-on delays to following trains because of the limit margin time and recovery time in the nominal timetable in bottleneck sections. This paper proposes a cooperative strategy framework for train rescheduling of portal junctions leading into bottleneck sections to decrease the overall delay and recovery from the unpredictable event of disturbances. The strategy is mainly based on an improved Differential Evolution algorithm for the Junction Rescheduling Model (DE-JRM), which is proved to be suitable for solving train rescheduling problems for both individual fly-over junctions and flat junctions. Keywords: train rescheduling, differential evolution, bottleneck sections. 1 Introduction In practical railway operations, most train delays occur in junction areas, where trains from different origins converge. Because of the conflict at the junction point, a delay to one train can cause unplanned stops and consequential delays for the trains on other converging routes. A typical example is shown in Figure 1. Train 1 and train 2 approach the station ahead from different routes, via

Keywords

train rescheduling, differential evolution, bottleneck sections