IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems

Throughout the world, many rails are heavily congested, resulting in services being very susceptible to minor delays and disturbances. Furthermore, there is pressure for rail to reduce their costs and carbon footprints. There is an opportunity for rail to adopt new methods to make better use of the existing capability of the system through improved rail operational strategies to reduce the impact of disruptions and to reduce energy utilisation. At a system level, in order to realise such approaches it is necessary to integrate a number of rail disciplines, for example, rail timetabling, rail operations, signalling and train control.