The RailTech Expert series on Resilient Timetabling & Energy Saving in Rail takes place in June 2018. The location will shortly be communicated. This conference aims at bringing together the best practices and state of the art solutions of resilient transport planning to improve railway transport performance under disruptions and shares the latest advancements in energy efficiency.
Resilient timetabling
Resilience of railway transport is essential to avoid serious inconvenience to passengers when disruptive events occur. Resilient railway transport aims at having good performance under normal conditions but also maintaining a satisfactory level of service under disrupted traffic conditions. Disruptions include infrastructure and rolling stock failures, adverse weather conditions, but also planned track possessions for maintenance. These cause serious infeasibility problems to the schedules of train services, rolling stock and crews, and not the least to the travel options of passengers. Severe winter weather is a recurrent phenomenon in many countries, and also possessions are planned more and more during day time or in the weekend in some countries to avoid costly and unattractive night time maintenance work. Therefore timetable resilience has become an important topic on the agenda of many infrastructure managers and railway undertakings.
Possible topics include approaches to resilient planning of timetables, spare rolling stock and crew, planned disruptions by events and maintenance, unplanned disruptions by failures, adverse weather conditions, travel and route choice during disruptions, and data analytics.
Energy saving in rail
Railway transport is more energy efficient than most other transport modes, but still a large consumer of energy. A further reduction of energy consumption is important to reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions, and enlarge the competitive advantages of railway transport to mobility. Energy efficiency is a main issue to the railway sector and many energy efficiency innovations are being investigated, tested and deployed. These include innovations in energy efficient design of rolling stock, energy saving solutions in infrastructure technology, and technology for energy efficient train operations.
Possible topics include energy savings in vehicles, energy savings in infrastructure components, power supply, regenerative braking, green waves by energy efficient timetabling and traffic management, energy-efficient driving, and Driver Advisory Systems.
Programme Committee
Prof. Dr. Rob Goverde – Delft University of Technology
Marieke van Gompel – SpoorPro