Volpe Center: Volpe Center Highlights

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Volpe Center Highlights - January/February 2004

Mobility

Volpe Delivers Railroad Traffic Planning Software (FRA)

The Railroad Traffic Planner is a stand-alone planning aid that enables the user to identify and resolve schedule conflicts by simulating changes and assessing their impacts on operations.

The Volpe Center is developing a decision-support tool - the Railroad Traffic Planner - to enable more effective planning and management of railroad operations. The software, developed in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, demonstrates how traffic planners and operations managers can more effectively create and analyze complex railroad schedules. The tool was designed for short-line and regional railroads with the need for a stand-alone planning aid. This project, sponsored by the Federal Railroad Administration's Office of Research and Development Human Factors Program, supports the objective of enabling easier, safer, and more productive processes through the development and technology transfer of decision-support tools.

The Railroad Traffic Planner graphically displays train schedules using stringline diagrams that show each train's location across time as a string. Stringlines have been used in the railroad industry for many years to help planners analyze schedules, but the traditional approaches are time consuming and unwieldy. The Railroad Traffic Planner allows users to quickly generate and modify strings, enabling them to identify and resolve potential conflicts. Railroad planners can simulate proposed changes by repositioning trains or modifying variables, such as speed or how long a train stays in one place, and then view the consequences of their changes in graphic and tabular form. Consequences may include impacts on travel time and track use. For example, to ensure safety and efficiency when railroads use single track for travel in both directions, it is important for planners to analyze where and when the trains will meet or pass each other. The software also enables railroad planners to quickly assess the impact of maintenance activities, insert additional trains, and recover from emergencies, and minimize their negative impact on train operations.

On November 25, 2003, Ms. Mary Lee of the Operator Performance and Safety Analysis Division set up the latest demonstration version of the Railroad Traffic Planner at the Guilford Rail System in Billerica, Massachusetts. During this visit, the Guilford traffic planners indicated how they would use this application to analyze the impact of various factors, such as temporary speed restrictions and passenger trains sharing track with Guilford freight trains, to help them determine the best times for crew scheduling. Additional feedback from users will enable the Volpe team to refine the software and develop the tool for wider distribution.

The Volpe team is currently adding a module to the Railroad Traffic Planner that will enable a tracking system that uses the Global Positioning System to show near-real-time position data of locomotives.

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