Faced with increasing challenges, railways around Europe have recently undergone major reforms aiming to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the railway sector. New market structures such as vertical separation, deregulation and open access can allow for reduced public expenditures, increased market competition, and more efficient railway systems. However, these structures have introduced new challenges for managing infrastructure and operations. Railway capacity allocation, previously internally performed within monopolistic national companies, are now conferred to an infrastructure manager. The manager is responsible for transparent and efficient allocation of available capacity to the different (often competing) licensed railway undertakings. This thesis aims at developing a number of methods that can help allocate capacity in a deregulated (vertically separated) railway market. It focuses on efficiency in terms of social welfare, and transparency in terms of clarity and fairness. The work is concerned with successive allocation of capacity for publicly controlled and commercial traffic within a segmented railway market. The contributions include cost benefit analysis methods that allow public transport authorities to assess the social welfare of their traffic, and create efficient schedules. The thesis also describes a market-based transparent capacity allocation where infrastructure managers price commercial train paths to solve capacity conflicts with publicly controlled traffic. Additionally, solution methods are developed to help estimate passenger demand, which is a necessary input both for resolving conflicts, and for creating efficient timetables. Future capacity allocation in deregulated markets may include solution methods from this thesis. However, further experimentations are still required to address concerns such as data, legislation and acceptability. Moreover, future works can include prototyping and pilot projects on the proposed solutions, and investigating legal and digitalisation strategies to facilitate the implementation of such solutions. Med ökande utmaningar har järnvägar runt om i Europa genomgått stora reformer som syftar till att förbättra järnvägssektorns effektivitet och konkurrenskraft. Nya marknadsstrukturer såsom vertikal separering, avreglering och öppet tillträde för flera operatörer kan möjliggöra minskade offentliga kostnader, ökad marknadskonkurrens och effektivare järnvägssystem. Denna omreglering av järnvägsmarknaderna har dock skapat nya utmaningar för hanteringen av järnvägsinfrastruktur och drift. Tilldelning av järnvägskapacitet, vilket tidigare sköttes inom nationella monopolföretag, måste nu göras av en infrastrukturförvaltare (infrastructure manager). Förvaltarens kapacitetstilldelning till olika (ofta konkurrerande) licensierade järnvägsföretag (railway undertakings) måste samtidigt vara transparent, rättvis och leda till ett effektivt kapacitetsutnyttjande. I denna avhandling utvecklas metoder som kan användas av en infrastrukturförvaltare för att tilldela kapacitet i en avreglerad järnvägsmarknad. Den fokuserar på samhällsekonomiskt effektiva utfall men även transparens, tydlighet och rättvisa. Avhandlingens bidrag omfattar samhällsekonomiska analysmetoder som gör det möjligt för regionala kollektivtrafikmyndigheter att bedöma den samhällsekonomiska effektiviteten för deras trafikering och skapa ett effektivt utbud. Med dessa metoder som utgångspunkt beskrivs en marknadsbaserad och transparent tilldelningsprocess för kapacitet där infrastrukturförvaltare prissätter kommersiella tåglägen för att lösa kapacitetskonflikter med offentligt kontrollerad trafik. Dessutom utvecklas optimeringsmetoder för att estimera passagerarefterfrågan och för att skapa effektiva tågtidtabeller. Framtida kapacitetstilldelning på avreglerade marknader kan inkludera lösningsmetoder från denna avhandling. Ytterligare experiment krävs dock fortfarande för att hantera problem såsom data, lagstiftning och godtagbarhet. Dessutom kan framtida arbete omfatta prototyper och pilotprojekt av de föreslagna lösningarna och undersöka lagliga och digitaliseringsstrategier för att underlätta implementeringen av sådana lösningar.

Infrastructure managers in railway systems are striving to have as e?cient track utilization as possible. There are no unanimous interpretation of e?ciency in terms of track utilization, but the aim of the Swedish Transport Administration is to allocate track capacity such that societal bene?t is maximized. This means that the tracks should be used by as much tra?c as possible and by tra?c that provides as much bene?t for the society as possible. To allocate track capacity such that the track utilization is optimal would be an easy task if the track capacity were not a scarce resource. Today, many train operators share railway network and there are cases when two or more operators want to use the same track capacity at the same time. The infrastructure manager must then make priorities and reject some operators, and the question is which operators to reject. The guiding principle is to grant the operators that provide the highest societal bene?t access to the tracks. However, the question would then change into how to know which operator that provides the highest societal bene?t. In this thesis, the societal bene?t of publicly subsidized tra?c is estimated using social cost-bene?t analysis. Mathematical models and methods are developed for quantifying and computing the number of departures for the publicly subsidized tra?c and their distribution in time, i.e. a train timetable, that provides the maximal societal bene?t in a social cost-bene?t analysis setting. The societal bene?t of commercial tra?c is estimated using the market value for their requested train timetables. The market value is set using dynamic pricing. A suggestion of a dynamic pricing process that can be used in the train timetabling process is described. Mathematical models and methods for calculating the supply and demand of a track access request are developed and tested, which enables the use of a dynamic pricing process on track capacity

This thesis is about mathematical optimization for the efficient use of railway infrastructure. We address the optimal allocation of the available railway track capacity - the track allocation problem. This track allocation problem is a major challenge for a railway company, independent of whether a free market, a private monopoly, or a public monopoly is given. Planning and operating railway transportation systems is extremely hard due to the combinatorial complexity of the underlying discrete optimization problems, the technical intricacies, and the immense sizes of the problem instances. Mathematical models and optimization techniques can result in huge gains for both railway customers and operators, e.g., in terms of cost reductions or service quality improvements. We tackle this challenge by developing novel mathematical models and associated innovative algorithmic solution methods for large scale instances. This allows us to produce for the first time reliable solutions for a real world instance, i.e., the Simplon corridor in Switzerland.

This book promotes the use of mathematical optimization and operations research methods in rail transportation. The editors assembled thirteen contributions from leading scholars to present a unified voice, standardize terminology, and assess the state-of-the-art. There are three main clusters of articles, corresponding to the classical stages of the planning process: strategic, tactical, and operational. These three clusters are further subdivided into five parts which correspond to the main phases of the railway network planning process: network assessment, capacity planning, timetabling, resource planning, and operational planning. Individual chapters cover: Simulation Capacity Assessment Network Design Train Routing Robust Timetabling Event Scheduling Track Allocation Blocking Shunting Rolling Stock Crew Scheduling Dispatching Delay Propagation

The symposium Operations Research 2007 was held from September 5-7, 2007 at the Saarland University in Saarbru ̈cken. This international conference is at the same time the annual meeting of the German - erations Research Society (GOR). The transition in Germany (and many other countries in Europe) from a production orientation to a service society combined with a continuous demographic change generated a need for intensi?ed Op- ations Research activities in this area. On that account this conference has been devoted to the role of Operations Research in the service industry. The links to Operations Research are manifold and include many di?erent topics which are particularly emphasized in scienti?c sections of OR 2007. More than 420 participants from 30 countries made this event very international and successful. The program consisted of three p- nary,elevensemi-plenaryandmorethan300contributedpresentations, which had been organized in 18 sections. During the conference, the GOR Dissertation and Diploma Prizes were awarded. We congratulate all winners, especially Professor Wolfgang Domschke from the Da- stadt University of Technology, on receiving the GOR Scienti?c Prize Award.

Real-Time Management of Resource Allocation Systems focuses on the problem of managing the resource allocation taking place within the operational context of many contemporary technological applications, including flexibly automated production systems, automated railway and/or monorail transportation systems, electronic workflow management systems, and business transaction supporting systems. A distinct trait of all these applications is that they limit the role of the human element to remote high-level supervision, while placing the burden of the real-time monitoring and coordination of the ongoing activity upon a computerized control system. Hence, any applicable control paradigm must address not only the issues of throughput maximization, work-in-process inventory reduction, and delay and cost minimization, that have been the typical concerns for past studies on resource allocation, but it must also guarantee the operational correctness and the behavioral consistency of the underlying automated system. The resulting problem is rather novel for the developers of these systems, since, in the past, many of its facets were left to the jurisdiction of the present human intelligence. It is also complex, due to the high levels of choice – otherwise known as flexibility – inherent in the operation of these environments.

Prepare Your Students for Statistical Work in the Real WorldStatistics for Engineering and the Sciences, Sixth Edition is designed for a two-semester introductory course on statistics for students majoring in engineering or any of the physical sciences. This popular text continues to teach students the basic concepts of data description and statist

One of the most important things to consider before constructing a railway is the train operating program. However, the analysis of the operating program based train schedule in the railway planning stage is carried out mainly on the basis of the intuitive experiences of the planner, and the optimization of the train schedule under various conditions is not properly considered. This study analyzes the optimization of heterogeneous train scheduling structures with minimizing the weighted scheduled waiting time and with the decision of Subsidiary Main Track (SMT) for overtaking of high-speed trains on the railway line. As a way for analyzing the Optimal Train Schedule (OTS) under constraint conditions, the genetic algorithm is used. The genetic algorithm is widely applied to various optimization and decision-making problems in engineering, natural sciences, business administration, and social sciences. The proposed method can examine train schedules for more scenarios, apply quantitative evaluation criteria, and review concrete infrastructures in comparison to the existing empirical method used in South Korea.

This book contains the papers included in the proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on High-speed and Intercity Railways (IWHIR 2011) held in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, China from July 19 to July 22, 2011, which is organized by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in collaboration with Southwest Jiaotong University, Beijing Jiaotong University, Dalian Jiaotong University, China Engineering Consultants, Inc., Zhejiang University, and Tsinghua University. Continuing the great initiatives and momentums of the rapid development in high-speed and intercity railways worldwide in recent years, IWHIR 2011 aims at providing a platform for academic scholars and practicing engineers to share knowledge and experience, to promote collaboration, and to strengthen R&D activities related to railway engineering. Engineers, scientists, professors, and students from universities, research institutes, and related industrial companies have been cordially invited to participate in the workshop. These papers have covered a wide range of issues concerning high-speed and intercity railways in the theoretical, numerical, and experimental work pertaining to high-speed and intercity railways. Showcasing diversity and quality, these papers report the state-of-the-art and point to future directions of research and development in this exciting area.

A proper quality of a track and other infrastructure objects represents a basic requirement for train safety and punctuality. Most of the physical systems and their components deteriorate over time. This affects performance and may lead to failures. Albert Einstein said, “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” Only if we understand how the whole system works, taking into account its imperfections and how they influence its quality and performance will we be able to learn the rules of the game and “play better.” The book provides the readers with the necessary functional knowledge of track behaviour and comprehensively covers the function of the various track components, their interaction as elements of the track system, as well as the interaction of the track with railway vehicles. By presenting important tools for a deep understanding of track-behaviour this book aims to be a reference guide for infrastructure managers and to help them to find ways improving track quality for optimum long-term behaviour.