One of the essential roles of railway operators is to maintain punctual transportation services and safety (as referred to in [1,2]). The dispatcher in charge of train rescheduling in the train traffic control room must stop related trains immediately to ensure safety if an accident occurs on a railway line. On the other hand, particularly if an accident causes blockage of the line for a long time, the dispatcher must decide which trains should be running and which should be stopped. Moreover, the locations of the trains to be stopped should be decided appropriately at that point. This decision-making process is referred to as train stop deployment planning.A basic requirement in train stop deployment planning is to accommodate the train at a location with a platform. If a train stops before entering a station, the passengers on board cannot disembark to take alternative means of transport (such as buses or trains on other railway lines) to reach their destinations. It is therefore desirable to hold the train at a location with a platform.Another requirement is that a stopped train should not block following trains that are scheduled to run onto another line. If stopped trains occupy all tracks at a station, the following trains cannot pass through. If a following train has a destination on another line, the delay propagates to that line. To avoid such a scenario, train dispatchers must maintain routes for trains bound for other lines.A number of constraints exist in train stop deployment planning. A train must not be stopped at a station where the length of the platform is insufficient to accommodate it, as its rear end will extend onto the track. Onboard hardware such as signalling system units limits which tracks a train can enter.To prepare the deployment of train stops, these requirements and constraints must be considered. Simply moving trains to the nearest station can cause the problem of local trains blocking following express services.Extensive research has been carried out in the area of train timetabling problems [3][4][5], and train rescheduling research has recently attracted attention (as referred to in [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]). On the other hand, train stop deployment planning problems are reported only in passing in [13]. In that paper, the authors examined a problem on a line with only two train classes and a simple track layout. It is necessary to introduce sophisticated procedures for the professional treatment of today's complicated railway lines.In this study, we represented a train stop deployment planning problem as a Petri net model (referred to in [14,15]) and formalized it as an integer programming problem. Based on this modelling and formalization, we introduced an algorithm to solve the problem. The results of numerical experiments indicated that the algorithm is capable of finding a practical solution to the problem within a reasonable computing time.

In order to evaluate train timetables from point of view of the passengers, it is indispensable to estimate the disutility of passengers. This can be done by accurately estimating the movements of passengers and trains. In particular, when there is a large number of passengers, the interactions between the passengers and trains must be considered. To this end, we have developed a microsimulation system to simulate both train operation and passengers' train choice behavior. The system can simulate the train choice behaviors of more than one million passengers as well as their positions in trains. It is possible to estimate the delays caused by crowding in trains as well. The system is based on models of different attitudes of the passengers with respect to the train choice behavior, which includes the choice of the earliest train, transfer avoidance, and avoiding crowding; a passenger's train choice behavior reflects his/her preferences. We applied this system to an actual railway line in a metropolitan area and evaluated two train schedules by calculating the generalized cost, which reflects each passenger's disutility based on his/her experience. Numerical experiments confirmed that the proposed method is very useful for evaluating timetables from the point of view of the passengers.

Taketoshi KUNIMATSUKeisuke SATO

This paper aims to reveal the fundamental features of customer satisfaction with train schedules, which is one of the most basic services provided by a railway company. A customer satisfaction survey of passengers who frequently utilize three lines in the metropolitan area was conducted; we obtained the following findings: (a) out of nine factors to evaluate a train schedule from a passenger's viewpoint, the four most important ones are the frequency of trains running, punctuality, congestion rate, and time distance; (b) the ride-frequency influences the degree of satisfaction with train schedules in a particular line; and (c) it is important to set a numeric goal for the level of customer satisfaction by grasping the relationship between the transport service and a passenger's satisfaction with that service. The difference between customer satisfaction and passenger disutility is also discussed. The findings are expected to help conduct customer satisfaction surveys and also to form the basis for establishing a method by which to evaluate a train schedule from passengers' satisfaction ratings.

When rescheduling train traffic after an operational disruption, train operation companies endeavor to take passenger flows into account. In this paper, a method was developed utilizing accumulated passenger data and records of arrival and departure times of each train to estimate passenger flows in such situations. The first step was to devise a visualization method to understand the relationship between rescheduling arrangements and passenger flows. Multiple regression analysis was also applied to collected data from the previous twelve months in order to develop a model for estimating passenger flows during traffic disruption. The methods are verified by applying them to actual cases of train traffic disturbances, which confirmed their reliability and effectiveness.