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Documents authored by Corman, Francesco

Document
Short Paper
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2026.16
Computing the Cost of Stability in Periodic Microscopic Railway Timetabling via Logic-Based Benders Decomposition (Short Paper)

Authors: Tongcheng Ouyang, Florian Flükiger-Fuchs, Bernardo Martin-Iradi, and Francesco Corman

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 147, 26th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2026)

Abstract
Periodic railway timetables require stability in operation, but the cost of increasing stability in terms of total travel time remains unclear. We study this cost of stability in microscopic periodic timetabling using the realisable cycle time as a stability measure. To implement stability, we compress the timetable to a shorter realisable cycle time that remains feasible at the microscopic level, and then rescale it back to the nominal period used in regular operation. The difference between this nominal period and the realisable cycle time becomes the time supplement available for absorbing delays. We formulate an optimization problem that jointly considers realisable cycle time and total travel time, and solve it with Logic-Based Benders Decomposition. The master problem optimizes commercial timing variables, while the subproblem verifies microscopic feasibility with routing, periodicity, and resource-conflict constraints. Infeasible subproblems yield activity cuts that constrain the master. Experiments on two Swiss railway case studies show that the proposed decomposition substantially improves computational performance on the larger instance and reveals nonlinear cost-of-stability frontiers with topology-dependent infeasible cycle-time regions and exceptionally high marginal costs at certain stability levels.
Cite as

Tongcheng Ouyang, Florian Flükiger-Fuchs, Bernardo Martin-Iradi, and Francesco Corman. Computing the Cost of Stability in Periodic Microscopic Railway Timetabling via Logic-Based Benders Decomposition (Short Paper). In 26th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 147, pp. 16:1-16:6, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{ouyang_et_al:OASIcs.ATMOS.2026.16,
  author =	{Ouyang, Tongcheng and Fl\"{u}kiger-Fuchs, Florian and Martin-Iradi, Bernardo and Corman, Francesco},
  title =	{{Computing the Cost of Stability in Periodic Microscopic Railway Timetabling via Logic-Based Benders Decomposition}},
  booktitle =	{26th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2026)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:6},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-453-6},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{147},
  editor =	{Cacchiani, Valentina and Funke, Stefan},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2026.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-278128},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2026.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Railway timetabling, periodic stability, microscopic timetabling, logic-based Benders decomposition}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2011.15
A bilevel rescheduling framework for optimal inter-area train coordination

Authors: Francesco Corman, Andrea D'Ariano, Dario Pacciarelli, and Marco Pranzo

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 20, 11th Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (2011)

Abstract
Railway dispatchers reschedule trains in real-time in order to limit the propagation of disturbances and to regulate traffic in their respective dispatching areas by minimizing the deviation from the off-line timetable. However, the decisions taken in one area may influence the quality and even the feasibility of train schedules in the other areas. Regional control centers coordinate the dispatchers' work for multiple areas in order to regulate traffic at the global level and to avoid situations of global infeasibility. Differently from the dispatcher problem, the coordination activity of regional control centers is still underinvestigated, even if this activity is a key factor for effective traffic management. This paper studies the problem of coordinating several dispatchers with the objective of driving their behavior towards globally optimal solutions. With our model, a coordinator may impose constraints at the border of each dispatching area. Each dispatcher must then schedule trains in its area by producing a locally feasible solution compliant with the border constraints imposed by the coordinator. The problem faced by the coordinator is therefore a bilevel programming problem in which the variables controlled by the coordinator are the border constraints. We demonstrate that the coordinator problem can be solved to optimality with a branch and bound procedure. The coordination algorithm has been tested on a large real railway network in the Netherlands with busy traffic conditions. Our experimental results show that a proven optimal solution is frequently found for various network divisions within computation times compatible with real-time operations.
Cite as

Francesco Corman, Andrea D'Ariano, Dario Pacciarelli, and Marco Pranzo. A bilevel rescheduling framework for optimal inter-area train coordination. In 11th Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 20, pp. 15-26, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2011)

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@InProceedings{corman_et_al:OASIcs.ATMOS.2011.15,
  author =	{Corman, Francesco and D'Ariano, Andrea and Pacciarelli, Dario and Pranzo, Marco},
  title =	{{A bilevel rescheduling framework for optimal inter-area train coordination}},
  booktitle =	{11th Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems},
  pages =	{15--26},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-33-0},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2011},
  volume =	{20},
  editor =	{Caprara, Alberto and Kontogiannis, Spyros},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2011.15},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-32636},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2011.15},
  annote =	{Keywords: Train Delay Minimization, Schedule Coordination, Bilevel Programming}
}

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