Robustness in Railway OperationS
RobustRailS is a large interdisciplinary project that will attempt to answer the question that is constantly being asked in the media and among commuters, as well as by politicians and the operators themselves: Can we get the trains to run on time?
Passengers and commuters being able to rely on arriving on schedule when travelling by rail is worth billions of kroner to the Danish economy. When we plan work-related meetings, personal appointements, and onward connections etc., we depend on the robustness of the rail timetable, with major deviations from it costing an enormous amunt of time and money. DSB (Danish State Railways), S-tog (Copenhagen's urban rapid transit and suburban rail network), and Banedanmark (Rail Net Denmark) are among Denmark's most criticised institutions. Funded by a large grant from the Danish Council for Strategic Research, four departments here at DTU are carrying out RobustRailS, comprehensive project focusing on rail service robustness
This project brings together DTU Management Engineering, DTU Transport, DTU Compute, and DTU Fotonik, and aims at making rail transport more sustainable through the development of systems that provide robustness in the planning of, and during, railway operations. New signaling systems, robust communications and verifiably correct IT systems will be used to rethink and redesign operating systems. Finally, models will be developed to assist the analysis of passenger flows, which can validate the effect of more robust rail operations.
The Project Manager of the project is Professor David Pissinger.
This project is funded by The Danish Council for Strategic Research and runs for the four year period 2012-2016.