WIT Press

The Max-plus Algebra Approach To Railway Timetable Design

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

37

Pages

12

Published

1998

Size

1,117 kb

Paper DOI

10.2495/CR980331

Copyright

WIT Press

Author(s)

R.M.P. Goverde

Abstract

A scheduled railway system that operates according to a cyclic timetable naturally exhibits a cyclic (periodic) behaviour. In a max-plus algebra set- ting such a system can be modelled as a linear (discrete event) dynamic system. The computation of a timetable then reduces to solving an eigen- value problem for which efficient algorithms have been developed. Moreover, the max-plus algebra system theory contains stability analysis and simula- tion facilities. This paper shows that the max-plus algebra approach offers an efficient interactive timetable design framework which directs attention to the critical components in the railway system. 1 Introduction An operational timetable must be robust to uncertainty in train run- ning times and correspondin

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