A DELAY PROPAGATION ALGORITHM FOR LARGE-SCALE SCHEDULED RAIL TRAFFIC

In scheduled railway traffic networks a single delayed train may cause a domino effect of secondary delays over the entire network, which is a main concern to planners and dispatchers. This paper presents a model and algorithm to compute the propagation of initial delays over a periodic railway timetable. The railway system is modelled as a linear system in max-plus algebra including zero-order dynamics corresponding to delay propagation within a timetable period. A timed event graph representation is exploited in an effective graph algorithm that computes the propagation of train delays using a bucket implementation to store the propagated delays.