Cyclic Railway Timetable Optimization

TLDR

Cyclic timetables schedule trains at fixed times each cycle, are widely used in European railways, and give passengers predictable departure times. The thesis develops a mathematical model to optimize cyclic railway timetables and investigates its theoretical foundations. The model incorporates cyclic sequencing, periodic tensions, graph cycle bases, cutting‑plane techniques, and extensions to improve timetable construction. The theoretical concepts were validated on real‑world cyclic timetabling instances.

Abstract

textabstractCyclic Railway Timetable Optimization describes mathematical models and solution methods for constructing high quality cyclic railway timetables. In a cyclic timetable, a train for a certain destination leaves a certain station at the same time every cycle time, say every half an hour, every hour, or every two hours. Cyclic timetables are widely used in European railways. Cyclic timetables are widely used in European They offer a clear and transparant product to the railway customers, who only need to memorize the minutes of the hour at which their regular trains depart. Because of the important role of timetable planning for railway operators and railway infras The thesis presents a mathematical model for optimizing cyclic railway timetables, and studies the theoretical aspects behind the model. The investigated aspects include cyclic sequencing, periodic tensions, cycles in graphs, cycle bases of graphs, algorithms for constructing cycle bases, and cutting planes for the model. The developed theoretical ideas are Tested on some real-life cyclic railway timetabling instances. The thesis further develops several extensions of the basic model.