Planning of rail freight unit train operation in the liberalized environment – instrument for dynamic assignment of paths on railway network

Abstract

Reliability, speed and accuracy of transport according to customer needs is an essential aspect that affects the competitiveness of rail freight transportation. All resources used for planning, assuring and realization of individual transport are limited. The basis is that all operations must be planned, because it is the best way, how to provide service as required by customers with the least possible use of the capacity of the resources and also does not overload them. This paper considers the problem of improving short-term train path planning and operation path management that the ad hoc assignment of train path to the definite trainset operating under real-time information and automated assigning system. The proposed instrument performs dynamic assignment of ad hoc request for train running to appropriate train path through a fast and efficient solution procedure based on the assigning algorithm. The instrument reduce time for path assignment and enable to dispatchers use more time on solving real-time operational problems caused by disruptions. The procedure has been tested on real-life data from one of the major railroads in Central Europe.