Enhancing energy efficiency in railway operation through RCG-based rescheduling

This paper presents a new approach for train rescheduling, based on a Resource Conflict Graph (RCG) approach, which considers energy efficiency aspects into solutions. The model is expressly developed for highly congested mixed traffic networks, where rail operation deals with different rail services (Intercity, InterRegio; single wagonload, mail trains) and high computing speed is required. Here energy consumption is considered as a constraint, in order to improve algorithm performances and, at the same time, to obtain a more energy efficient solution. First experiments with real data of a Swiss network show how the model behaves with different energy consumption constraints and its suitability for real time applications.