Cyclic Railway Timetable Optimization

Cyclic 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. 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 infrastructure

managers, models and methods for optimizing cyclic railway timetables

provide a valuable tool for these organizations. 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.