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Dispatching-Area Design

Authors Tomas Lidén , Christiane Schmidt , Rabii Zahir

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OASIcs.ATMOS.2026.5.pdf
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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Applied computing → Transportation
Keywords
  • Railway sectorization
  • Area design
  • Train dispatching

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Abstract

Increasing traffic density and system interdependencies in railway networks can lead to imbalanced workload distribution among train dispatchers. Traditional dispatching-area design, often based on historical and geographical considerations, may no longer reflect current infrastructure complexity and coordination requirements, potentially affecting punctuality and operational robustness.
In this paper, we study the problem of partitioning a set of train stations into a predefined number of dispatching areas, formulated as a multi-objective mixed-integer programming problem. The objective is to minimize a weighted sum of inter-area interaction complexity and intra-area operational complexity. Inter-area complexity captures coordination needs through the number of trains crossing area boundaries, while intra-area complexity is modeled using station-related parameters, including track layout, traffic density, starting and ending services, and traffic heterogeneity (mix of passenger and freight traffic).
We apply the suggested approach to instances from the Malmö dispatching center in the southern part of the Swedish railway network, illustrating how an optimization-grounded sectorization framework can support structured and balanced redesign of dispatching areas. We evaluate the model’s robustness by through sensitivity analyses on objective weights, minimum area size, and the number of dispatching areas. These analyses provide insights into how different planning priorities influence the resulting sectorization.

Cite As Get BibTex

Tomas Lidén, Christiane Schmidt, and Rabii Zahir. Dispatching-Area Design. In 26th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 147, pp. 5:1-5:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2026.5

Author Details

Tomas Lidén
  • Department of Science and Technology (ITN), Linköping University, Sweden
Christiane Schmidt
  • Department of Science and Technology (ITN), Linköping University, Sweden
Rabii Zahir
  • Department of Science and Technology (ITN), Linköping University, Sweden

Funding

This work is part of the Trafikverket-funded project Dispatching Areas: Combinations and Design (DACoD) (TRV 2023/91772).

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to David Dekker for his support and guidance in working with the data used in this paper, which was greatly appreciated.

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