An Optimization Approach for Real-Time Headway Control of Railway Traffic

Headway irregularity not only increases average passenger waiting time but also causes additional energy consumption and more delay time. A real-time headway control model is proposed to maintain headway regularity in railway networks by adjusting the travel time on each segment for each train. The adjustment of travel time is based on a consensus algorithm. In the proposed consensus algorithm, the control law is obtained by solving the Riccati equation. The minimum running time on a segment is also considered. The computation time of the proposed method is analyzed and the analysis results show that it can satisfy the requirement on real-time operation. The proposed model is tested and the consensus trend of headways can be observed through simulation. The simulation results also demonstrate that the average passenger waiting time decreases from 52 to 50 seconds/passenger. Additionally, the delay time is reduced by 6.5% at least and energy consumption can be reduced by 0.1% at most after using the proposed method.