Integrated Timetable Rescheduling for Multidispatching Sections of High-Speed Railways During Large-Scale Disruptions

Under the condition of network operation of high-speed railways (HSRs), the influence of disruptions on the train control and dispatching at the current line and related lines is more and more significant. This article focuses on the timetable cooperative rescheduling problem with multidispatching sections of HSRs from a macroscopic perspective in the case of large disruptions. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) model on the objectives of minimizing the weighted sum of the arrival delay time of trains, the delay time of depart trains at the handover station, and the number of delays of trains at all stations. The strategies of retiming and reordering are adopted to generate the rescheduling scheme and reduce delay propagation by making full use of three kinds of buffer time reserved in the timetable, i.e., buffer times of train operation in the station, train running in the section, and electric multiple unit (EMU) connection. A case study of the timetable rescheduling at the two adjacent dispatching sections of the Beijing-Shanghai HSRs line is conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed integrated rescheduling approach. The relationship between computing time and the quality of rescheduling schemes is also investigated. The computational results show that the proposed approach can generate a conflict-free timetable with the minimum arrival delay time and the number of delays of all trains at all stations compared to the nonintegrated rescheduling approach and the benchmark solution of the first-come-first-serve (FCFS) approach. The propagation of delay between dispatching sections is also greatly suppressed. The results can provide support for dispatchers to making reasonable rescheduling decisions in the case of large disruptions.

Automated summary

This article focuses on the cooperative rescheduling problem with multidispatching sections of HSRs in the case of large disruptions under the condition of high-speed rail network operation. By formulating the problem as a mixed-integer linear program model to minimize arrival delay time and delay propagation, strategies of retiming and reordering are adopted to generate conflict-free timetables with minimum delays. The computational results demonstrate that the proposed integrated approach outperforms the nonintegrated rescheduling approach and the benchmark solution, suppressing delay propagation effectively.