Assisted Very Short Term Planning

Start date: 1 April 2020
End date: 30 November 2022
Funder: RSSB
Partners and collaborators: Bellvedi/Tracsis
Primary investigator: Professor Ronghui Liu
Co-investigators: Dr Zhiyuan Lin

A busy and bustling train station floor featuring departure screens and lots of people moving around

Very Short Term Planning (VSTP) is a railway operation process by which the need to change one or more train services at very short notice (on the day in question or over the next 48 hours) can be made. Working closely with the relevant rail industry, the Assistant-VSTP project is to create a digital platform that can process VSTP requests, create and validate the proposed schedules, and transfer the VSTP schedule to the Network Rail control team.

The team at ITS Leeds will develop dynamic train timetabling capability that allows the automatic creation of adjusted plans to reschedule and/or reroute train services against around the problem areas, and will explore advanced Artificial Intelligence in automating the train timetable planning processes. The improvements in a digital VSTP process will provide the foundation for more flexible and dynamic timetables, where available capacity can be adjusted to meet the changes in demand.

Project website

https://www.sparkrail.org/Lists/Records/DispForm.aspx?ID=27306