A timetable rescheduling approach and transition phases for high-speed railway traffic during disruptions

Research focused on the real-time rescheduling of high-speed railway traffic with a quasi-moving blocking system and transition process affected by the entrance delays and disruptions determining speed limitation. A mixed-integer linear program model related to a job shop model of operations is formulated to reduce the final delay (tardiness) of trains, where three objective functions combine different manners related to traffic control and speed management. The dynamic interaction between train speed and distance headway is considered in the model. Through experiments on a real-world high-speed line in China, the solution quality of the model is assessed by the delay distribution of trains or the smooth degree of train speed profile. The model manages to optimize traffic in the transition from a disordered condition (when disruptions appear) to a normal condition (after disruptions) for real-time operations. In conclusion, there are two and three transition phases for the cases without and with entrance delays, respectively, seen by analyzing the deviation between the rescheduled and planned timetables.