Meet the Jury Anders Peterson on A Linear Programming Analysis of Railway Timetables with Fixed Train Order

Arenberg Doctoral School is proud to invite you to Meet The Jury!

When internationally renowned experts visit KU Leuven as a member of a PhD Examination Committee, we like to seize this opportunity to give this expert a forum to a large audience. All members of Science, Engineering & Technology are most welcome to the Meet The Jury Lectures.

Prof. Anders Peterson (Linköping University, Sweden) will give a lecture on “A Linear Programming Analysis of Railway Timetables with Fixed Train Order”.

Timetabling is a well-known optimization problem in railway operations. Typically, it is modelled as a mixed-integer linear programming problem, where ordering variables are integer and time variables continuous. In dense traffic, where well-constructed timetables are particularly important, the degree of freedom for the time variables is rather limited once the ordering variables are fixed. However, even for a timetable with a fixed train order, it can be hard for a timetable planner to identify which trains that need to be replanned or cancelled to improve the timetable. This is partly because there are many quality aspects to consider, and partly because the effects of cancelling/replanning a train are not always obvious. In this paper, we develop a framework for analysing a given train order by comparing its most extreme realizations with respect to the continuous time variables. The purpose is to find activities that are critical for the timetable’s capacity utilization, stability, total travel time, and heterogeneity. By analysing the critical activities, it is possible to identify train paths that are candidates for rescheduling or cancellation when trying to improve the overall quality of a timetable. We illustrate the concept with numerical results from a section of the Swedish Southern Mainline, a double-track line with dense and highly heterogeneous traffic and show how the framework can indeed be used to select which train to cancel to increase the timetable quality improvement potential. The optimization execution times are in the order of seconds, which makes the method suitable for everyday use.

Following the lecture, there will be opportunity for young researchers to interact with him.

• Venue: Aula Arenberg Castle (01.07),  Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 3001 Heverlee
• Date: 24 February 2026 – 12:30-15:30
• Prof. Anders Peterson is visiting KU Leuven on the occasion of the PhD defence of Inneke Van Hoeck