Work

Extending robustness concepts and model formulations for the timetable-constrained railway station routing problem using absorption graphs

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Ensuring the feasibility and robustness of train operations in stations and network nodes is receiving more and more attention given the trend towards a stronger integration of timetabling and network planning in railway systems. Existing approaches for robust station routing most commonly rely on the maximization of buffer times between consecutive trains. This view, however, neglects indirect dependencies between trains which may exacerbate delay propagation in the station, as well as dwell-time supplements. In this work we develop a new exact robust routing approach for stations that allows to minimize the expected delay caused by primary delays, generalizing delay absorption concepts used in timetable stability analysis and recoverable robustness. The methodology is based on a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) approach for modeling delay propagation that takes both direct and indirect train dependencies into account. We test our approach on three railway stations from the Netherlands, where it is found that the optimized routings of the new method can reduce the delay propagation compared to buffer-based methodologies.

Source: Public Transport

DOI: 10.1007/s12469-026-00425-1

Authors: Philipp Widmann, Norman Weik

Institutions: Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR), Technical University of Munich

Language: English

Topic: Railway Systems and Energy Efficiency

Subfield: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,390