Improving the Dutch railway services by network-wide timetable simulation

The DONS system, Designer Of Network Schedules, supports the development of timetables by generating regular interval timetables for the Dutch railway network; it is used to plan improved or new train services and to locate bottlenecks in the railway infrastructure. A new simulation module enables the planners to study the network-wide dynamic properties of DONS timetables. The direct link between DONS and this simulation module, enhanced by the re-use of previously defined DONS concepts and the automatic generation of simulation models from existing data, facilitates an integrated approach towards infrastructure and railway services development, focused on quality improvement.