Abstract
In public transport punctuality has prominent influence on the customers’ satisfaction. Our task is to support a management decision to optimally invest passengers’ nominal travel time to secure the nominal schedule against delay. For aperiodic scheduling we clarify the notion and use of a fixed amount of time supplements, so-called buffers, both theoretically and by realistic examples. The general tool to solve such optimization problems is a sampling approach. We show how this approach is mathematically justified. As its applicability to large networks is limited, we show an efficient alternative for the case of series-parallel graphs. For periodic timetabling we propose two heuristic approaches to ensure a certain level of delay resistance at the least expense of slightly increased nominal passengers travel time, and analyze in detail their advantages and drawbacks.
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This work has been supported by the DFG Research Center Matheon in Berlin, and by the EU Specific Targeted Research Project ARRIVAL.
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Liebchen, C., Stiller, S. Delay resistant timetabling. Public Transp 1, 55–72 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12469-008-0004-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12469-008-0004-3