Disruption Management in Passenger Railway Transportation

This paper deals with disruption management in passenger railway transportation. In the disruption management process, many actors belonging to different organizations play a role. In this paper we therefore describe the process itself and the roles of the different actors. Furthermore, we discuss the three main subproblems in railway disruption management: timetable adjustment, and rolling stock and crew re-scheduling.

Next to a general description of these problems, we give an overview of the existing literature and we present some details of the specific situations at DSB S-tog and NS. These are the railway operators in the suburban area of Copenhagen, Denmark, and on the main railway lines in the Netherlands, respectively.

Since not much research has been carried out yet on Operations Research models for disruption management in the railway context, models and techniques that have been developed for related problems in the airline world are discussed as well. Finally, we address the integration of the re-scheduling processes of the timetable, and the resources rolling stock and crew.