Innovative Decision Support System for Railway Traffic Control

Traffic controllers monitor railway traffic in a wide control area and may actively set new targets to trains for smooth operations. A decision support system, ROMA (Railway traffic Optimization by Means of Alternative graphs), is developed to cope with real-time timetable disturbances (e.g., multiple train delays and blocked tracks) more effectively. This dynamic traffic control system co-ordinates the speed of successive trains on open track (re-timing), solves expected route conflicts (re-ordering) and provides dynamic use of platform tracks in a station or alternative paths in a corridor between stations (local re-routing). We adopt blocking time theory for modeling track occupation and signaling constraints and alternative graphs for solving dynamic traffic control problems with the aim of increasing punctuality through intelligent use of the rail infrastructure. An extensive computational study is carried out on two complicated and densely used areas of the Dutch railways.