Author(s)

QUENTIN PERRACHON, RÉMY CHEVRIER, PAOLA PELLEGRINI

Abstract

In this paper we propose an experimental study aimed at assessing a new paradigm for railway traffic management. In current practice and academic state of the art, train priority decisions in the case of perturbation are made centrally. In this work, train traffic is modelled as a multi-agent system in which trains are decision makers. We implement a microscopic simulator for assessing the viability of this decentralized traffic management and for comparing it with the centralized one. Our results show that it is indeed possible to let trains decide their own priority and it is possible to achieve results which are comparable to simple centralized approaches in terms of passenger travel time in the mass-transit area of Paris, France.

Keywords

railway dispatching, decentralisation, multi-agent system