Real-Time Track Reallocation for Emergency Incidents at Large Railway Stations

Abstract EN

After track capacity breakdowns at a railway station, train dispatchers need to generate appropriate track reallocation plans to recover the impacted train schedule and minimize the expected total train delay time under stochastic scenarios.

This paper focuses on the real-time track reallocation problem when tracks break down at large railway stations.

To represent these cases, virtual trains are introduced and activated to occupy the accident tracks.

A mathematical programming model is developed, which aims at minimizing the total occupation time of station bottleneck sections to avoid train delays.

In addition, a hybrid algorithm between the genetic algorithm and the simulated annealing algorithm is designed.

The case study from the Baoji railway station in China verifies the efficiency of the proposed model and the algorithm.

Numerical results indicate that, during a daily and shift transport plan from 8:00 to 8:30, if five tracks break down simultaneously, this will disturb train schedules (result in train arrival and departure delays).