Author(s)

A.F. de Kort

Abstract

Advanced railway planning using (max, +) algebra A.F. de Kort Plan Development Department, Holland Railconsult, the Netherlands Abstract Railway planners decide whether a given railway infrastructure layout will be able to appropriately handle the expected long-term traffic demands. This paper concerns a typical railway planning problem, involving the high speed line between Amsterdam and Paris, called HSL South. A special traffic regime has been proposed to guarantee safe escape routes from each drilled tunnel in case of an emergency. This regime permits only one train per tunnel (thus both tubes) at a time. In the paper we show that this special traffic regime restricts the long-term perspectives of the HSL South too much. To this end, we calculate the minimal time interval the sys- tem requires to process consecutive trains without waiting, and we compare this value with the intended interval times for the years 2005-2015. The adopted approach is based on (max,+) algebra, a mathem

Keywords