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Evaluating line concepts using travel times and robustness

Simulations with the LinTim toolbox

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Abstract

Line planning is an early step in the planning process in public transportation, usually followed by designing the timetable. The problems related to both steps are known to be NP-hard, and an integrated model finding a line plan and a timetable simultaneously seems out of scope from a computational point of view. However, the line plan influences also the quality of the timetable to be computed in the next planning step.

In this paper we analyze the impact of different line planning models by comparing not only typical characteristics of the line plans, but also their impact on timetables and their robustness against delays. To this end, we set up a simulation platform LinTim which enables us to compute a timetable for each line concept and to experimentally evaluate its performance under delays. Using the German railway intercity network, we evaluate the quality of different line plans from a line planning, a timetabling, and a delay management perspective.

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Notes

  1. See http://lintim.math.uni-goettingen.de/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fachbereich Mathematik, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Paul-Ehrlich-Str. 14, 67653, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Marc Goerigk

  2. Institut für Numerische und Angewandte Mathematik, Georg-August Universität Göttingen, Lotzestr. 16-18, 37083, Göttingen, Germany

    Michael Schachtebeck & Anita Schöbel

Authors
  1. Marc Goerigk
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  2. Michael Schachtebeck
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  3. Anita Schöbel
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Correspondence to Anita Schöbel.

Additional information

Partially supported by grant SCHO 1140/3-2 within the DFG programme Algorithm Engineering.

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Goerigk, M., Schachtebeck, M. & Schöbel, A. Evaluating line concepts using travel times and robustness. Public Transp 5, 267–284 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12469-013-0072-x

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