Some influencing factors for passenger train punctuality in Sweden
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Published
Nov 17, 2020
Carl-William Palmqvist
Nils O.E. Olsson
Lena Winslott Hiselius
Abstract
Punctuality is regarded as an important measure of the performance of a railway system, and is the one most commonly used and discussed measure both in the industry and among travelers. In many countries, the punctuality of trains, and thus the performance of the railway system, is deemed as lacking. The aim of this article is to study and quantify how several weather-, timetable, operational and infrastructure-related variables influence punctuality in passenger train traffic. This can contribute to better understanding of the performance of railway systems, and help identify possible improvements. The study is based on a dataset containing detailed timetables and records of all 32.4 million train movements for all trains in Sweden during the year of 2015, over 1.1 million departures. Supporting this is a comprehensive register of over 80 000 infrastructure elements, and almost 87 million weather observations. We consider the size and allocation of margins, the existence of negative margins, two measures for traffic volume, the journey time and distance, how often different vehicle individuals are used, the number of line and station interactions between trains, the amount of precipitation, the temperature, wind speed, snow depth, and eight types of infrastructure elements. We show how these variables affect punctuality, and estimate how much of the variation in punctuality can be explained by them. The findings can be used to design timetables, change operational parameters and modify infrastructure design so that punctuality improves. They can also help identify areas which should be prioritized in planning, maintenance and research.
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Keywords
railway systems, punctuality, timetable, train, influencing factors
References
Andersson, E. V., Peterson, A. & Thörnquist Krasemann, J., (2013). Quantifying railway timetable robustness in critical points. Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, issue 3, pp. 95-110.
Andersson, E. V., Peterson, A. & Thörnquist Krasemann, J., (2015). Reduced railway traffic delays using a MILP approach to increase robustness in Critical Points. Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, issue 5, pp. 110-127.
Andersson, E., (2014). Assessment of Robustness in Railway Traffic Timetables. Licentiate thesis. Linköping University, Norrköping.
Brazil, W., White, A., Nogal, M., Caulfield, B., O’Connor, A. & Morton, C. (2017). Weather and rail delays: Analysis of metropolitan rail in Dublin. Journal of Transport Geography, vol. 59, pp. 69-76.
Carey, M., (1998). Optimizing scheduled times, allowing for behavioral response. Transportation Research Part B, vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 329-342.
Carey, M., (1999). Ex ante heuristic measures of schedule reliability. Transportation Research Part B, issue 33, pp. 473-494.
Cerreto, F., Nielsen, O. A., Harrod, S., & Nielsen, B. F. (2016). Causal Analysis of Railway Running Delays. Paper presented at 11th World Congress on Railway Research (WCRR 2016), Milan, Italy.
Cicerone, S., D’Angelo, G., Di Stefano, G., Frigioni, D. & Navarra, A. (2009). Recoverable robust timetabling for single delay: Complexity and polynomial algorithms for special cases. Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, issue 18, pp. 229-257.
Dewilde, T., Sels, P., Cattrysse, D. & Vansteenwegen, P., (2013). Robust railway station planning: An interaction between routing, timetabling and platforming. Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, issue 3, pp. 68-77.
Doll, C., Trinks, C., Sedlacek, N., Pelikan, V., Comes, T. & Schultmann, F. (2014). Adapting rail and road networks to weather extremes: case studies for southern Germany and Austria. Nat Hazards, vol. 72, pp. 63-85.
Ferranti, E., Chapman, L., Lowe, C., McCulloch, S., Jaroszweski, D. & Quinn, A. (2016). Heat-Related Failures on Southeast England’s Railway Network: Insights and Implications for Heat Risk Management. Weather, Climate and Society, vol. 8, issue 2, pp. 177-191.
Ford, A., Jenkins, K., Dawson, R., Pregnolato, M., Barr, S. & Hall, J. (2015). Simulating Impacts of Extreme Weather Events on Urban Transport Infrastructure in the UK. International Symposium for Next Generation Infrastructure Conference (ISNGI 2014), pp. 233-238, Vienna, Austria.
Gorman, M. F. (2009). Statistical estimation of railroad congestion delay. Transportation Research Part E, pp. 446-456.
Haldeman, L. (2003). Automatische Analyse von ISTFahrplanen. Zürich.
Hansen, I. A. (2009). Railway Network Timetabling and Dynamic Traffic Management. 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Railway Engineering (ICRARE-2009), pp. 135-144, Tehran, Iran.
Harris, N. (1992). Planning Passenger Railways: A Handbook. London: Transport Publishing Company Limited. International Union of Railways (2000). UIC Code 451-1 Timetable Recovery margins to guarantee timekeeping - Recovery margins. Paris: International Union of Railways.
Jaroszweski, D., Hooper, E., Baker, C., Chapman, L. & Quinn, A. (2015). The impacts of the 28 June 2012 storms on UK road and rail transport. Meteorological Applications, vol. 22, pp. 470-476.
Kellermann, P., Bubeck, P., Kundela, G., Dosio, A. & Thieken, A. H. (2016). Frequency Analysis of Critical Meteorological Conditions in a Changing Climate – Assessing Future Implications for Railway Transportation in Austria. Climate, vol. 4, issue 25.
Kim, H., Kang, J., & Bae, Y. (2013). Types of train delay of high-speed rail: indicators and criteria for classification. Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society, vol. 38, issue 3, pp.37-50.
Lehtonen, I. (2015). Four consecutive snow-rich winters in Southern Finland: 2009/2010-2012/2013. Weather, vol. 70, issue 1, pp 3-8.
Ludvigsen, J. & Klæboe, R. (2014). Extreme weather impacts on freight railways in Europe. Nat Hazards, vol. 70., pp- 767-787.
Nagy, E. & Csiszar, C. (2015). Analysis of delay causes in railway passenger transportation. Periodica Polytechnica Transportation Engineering, vol. 42. pp. 73-80.
Nelldal, B.-L. (2009). Kapacitetsanalys av järnvägsnätet i Sverige. Delrapport 3: Förslag till åtgärder för att öka kapaciteten på kort sikt. Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Nelldal, B.-L., Lindfeldt, A. & Lindfeldt, O. (2009). Kapacitetsanalys av järnvägsnätet i Sverige. Delrapport 1: Hur många tåg kan man köra? En analys av teoretisk och praktisk kapacitet. Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Nie, L. & Hansen, I. A. (2005). System analysis of train operations and track occupancy at railway stations. European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, vol. 1, issue 5, pp. 31-54.
Nikolic, I., Arsovski, S., Eric, M., Vujcic, S., Manojlovic, G. & Jovanovic, J. (2016). Overall railway infrastructure effectiveness as a quality factor for Serbian railways. Tehnicki vjesnik, vol. 2, pp. 547-554.
Nilsson, J.-E., Björklund, G., Pyddoke, R. & Vierth, I. (2015) Regress – en god idé i järnvägssektorn? VTI Rapport 850. Linköping: VTI.
Norrbin, P., Lin, J. & Parida, A. (2016). Infrastructure Robustness for Railway Systems. International Journal of Performability Engineering, vol. 13, issue 3, pp 249-264.
Olsson, N. & Haugland, H. (2004). Influencing factors on train punctuality - results from some Norwegian studies. Transport Policy, issue 11, pp. 387-397.
Olsson, N., Halse, A. H., Hegglund, P. M., Killi, M., van der Kooij, R., Landmark, A., Seim, A., Sørensen, A. Ø., Økland, A. & Østli, A. (2015). Punktlighet i jernbanen - hvert sekund teller. Oslo: SINTEF akademisk vorlag.
Oslakovic, I. S., ter Maat, H. W., Hartmann, A. & Dewulf, G. (2013). Risk Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Railway Infrastructure. Engineering Project Organization Conference 2013, July, 9-11, Devil’s Thumb Ranch, Colorado, USA.
Pachl, J. (2002). Railway Operation and Control. Mountlake Terrace: VTD Rail Publishing.
Palmqvist, C.-W., Olsson, N. O. E. & Hiselius, L. (2017a). An Empirical Study of Timetable Strategies and Their Effects on Punctuality. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Railway Operations Modelling and Analysis (RailLille 2017), April, 4-7, Lille, France.
Palmqvist, C.-W., Olsson, N. O. E. & Winslott Hiselius, L. (2017b). Punctuality problems from the perspective of timetable planners in Sweden. Paper presented at EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting 2017 (EWGT 2017), September, 4-6, Budapest, Hungary.
Parbo, J., Nielsen, O. & Prato, C. (2016). Passenger Perspectives in Railway Timetabling: A Literature Review. Transport Reviews, vol. 36, issue 4, pp. 500-526.
Qin, Y., Ma, X. & Jiang, S. (2017). A Stochastic Process Approach for Modeling Arrival Delay in Train Operations. Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting, January, 8-12, Washington, D. C., USA.
Rietveld, P., Bruinsma, F. & van Vuuren, D. (2001). Coping with unreliability in public transport chains: A case study for Netherlands. Transportation Research Part A, vol. 35, pp. 539-559.
Scheepmaker, G. M. & Goverde, R. M. (2015). The interplay between energy-efficient train control and scheduled running time supplements. Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, issue 5, pp. 225-239.
Schöbel, A. & Kratz, A. (2009). A bicriteria approach for robust timetabling. In Ahuja, R. K., Möhring, R. H. & Zaroliagis, C. D. (Eds.) Robust and online large-scale optimization, pp. 119-144. Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Stenström, C., Parida, A., Lundberg, J., & Kumar, U. (2015). Development of an integrity index for benchmarking and monitoring rail infrastructure: application of composite indicators. International Journal of Tail Transportation, vol. 3, issue 2, pp 61-80.
Swedish Transport Administration. (2017). Tillsammans för tåg i tid - Resultatrapport 2017. Borlänge: Trafikverket.
Tahvili, N. (2016). Winterization of Railways – issues and effects. Master thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.
Thaduri, A., Galar, D. & Kumar, U. (2015). Railway assets: A potential domain for big data analytics. Procedia Computer Science, vol. 53, pp 457-467.
Transport Analysis (2016). Punktlighet på järnväg 2015. Stockholm: Transport Analysis.
Veiseth, M., Olsson, N. O. E. & Saetermo, I. A. F. (2007). Infrastructure’s influence on rail punctuality. WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, vol. 96, pp 481-490.
Vekas, P., van der Vlerk, M. & Haneveld, W. (2012). Optimizing existing railway timetables by means of stochastic programming. Stochastic Programming EPrint Series, vol. 8.
Wiggenraad, I. P. B. (2001). Alighting and boarding times of passengers at Dutch railway stations. Delft, TRAIL Research School.
Vromans, 2005. Reliability of railway systems. Doctoral thesis, Erasmus Research Institute of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam.
Xia, Y., Van Ommeren, J. N. , Rietveld, P. & Verhagen, W. (2013). Railway infrastructure disturbances and train operator performance: the role of weather. Transportation Research Part D, vol. 18, pp. 97-102.
Xu, P., Corman, F. & Peng, Q. (2016). Analyzing Railway Disruptions and Their Impact on Delayed Traffic in Chinese High-Speed Railway. IFAC-PapersOnLine, volume 49, issue 3, pp 84-89.
Yuan, J. & Hansen, I. A. (2007). Optimizing capacity utilization of stations by estimating knock-on train delays. Transportation Research Part B, vol. 41, pp. 202-217.
Yuan, J. & Hansen, I. A. (2008). Closed form expression of optimal buffer times between scheduled trains at railway bottlenecks. 11th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, October, 12-15, Beijing, China.
Zakeri, G. & Olsson, N. O. E. (2017). Investigation of punctuality of local trains: The case of Oslo area. Paper presented at EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting 2017 (EWGT 2017), September, 4-6, Budapest, Hungary.
Andersson, E. V., Peterson, A. & Thörnquist Krasemann, J., (2015). Reduced railway traffic delays using a MILP approach to increase robustness in Critical Points. Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, issue 5, pp. 110-127.
Andersson, E., (2014). Assessment of Robustness in Railway Traffic Timetables. Licentiate thesis. Linköping University, Norrköping.
Brazil, W., White, A., Nogal, M., Caulfield, B., O’Connor, A. & Morton, C. (2017). Weather and rail delays: Analysis of metropolitan rail in Dublin. Journal of Transport Geography, vol. 59, pp. 69-76.
Carey, M., (1998). Optimizing scheduled times, allowing for behavioral response. Transportation Research Part B, vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 329-342.
Carey, M., (1999). Ex ante heuristic measures of schedule reliability. Transportation Research Part B, issue 33, pp. 473-494.
Cerreto, F., Nielsen, O. A., Harrod, S., & Nielsen, B. F. (2016). Causal Analysis of Railway Running Delays. Paper presented at 11th World Congress on Railway Research (WCRR 2016), Milan, Italy.
Cicerone, S., D’Angelo, G., Di Stefano, G., Frigioni, D. & Navarra, A. (2009). Recoverable robust timetabling for single delay: Complexity and polynomial algorithms for special cases. Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, issue 18, pp. 229-257.
Dewilde, T., Sels, P., Cattrysse, D. & Vansteenwegen, P., (2013). Robust railway station planning: An interaction between routing, timetabling and platforming. Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, issue 3, pp. 68-77.
Doll, C., Trinks, C., Sedlacek, N., Pelikan, V., Comes, T. & Schultmann, F. (2014). Adapting rail and road networks to weather extremes: case studies for southern Germany and Austria. Nat Hazards, vol. 72, pp. 63-85.
Ferranti, E., Chapman, L., Lowe, C., McCulloch, S., Jaroszweski, D. & Quinn, A. (2016). Heat-Related Failures on Southeast England’s Railway Network: Insights and Implications for Heat Risk Management. Weather, Climate and Society, vol. 8, issue 2, pp. 177-191.
Ford, A., Jenkins, K., Dawson, R., Pregnolato, M., Barr, S. & Hall, J. (2015). Simulating Impacts of Extreme Weather Events on Urban Transport Infrastructure in the UK. International Symposium for Next Generation Infrastructure Conference (ISNGI 2014), pp. 233-238, Vienna, Austria.
Gorman, M. F. (2009). Statistical estimation of railroad congestion delay. Transportation Research Part E, pp. 446-456.
Haldeman, L. (2003). Automatische Analyse von ISTFahrplanen. Zürich.
Hansen, I. A. (2009). Railway Network Timetabling and Dynamic Traffic Management. 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Railway Engineering (ICRARE-2009), pp. 135-144, Tehran, Iran.
Harris, N. (1992). Planning Passenger Railways: A Handbook. London: Transport Publishing Company Limited. International Union of Railways (2000). UIC Code 451-1 Timetable Recovery margins to guarantee timekeeping - Recovery margins. Paris: International Union of Railways.
Jaroszweski, D., Hooper, E., Baker, C., Chapman, L. & Quinn, A. (2015). The impacts of the 28 June 2012 storms on UK road and rail transport. Meteorological Applications, vol. 22, pp. 470-476.
Kellermann, P., Bubeck, P., Kundela, G., Dosio, A. & Thieken, A. H. (2016). Frequency Analysis of Critical Meteorological Conditions in a Changing Climate – Assessing Future Implications for Railway Transportation in Austria. Climate, vol. 4, issue 25.
Kim, H., Kang, J., & Bae, Y. (2013). Types of train delay of high-speed rail: indicators and criteria for classification. Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society, vol. 38, issue 3, pp.37-50.
Lehtonen, I. (2015). Four consecutive snow-rich winters in Southern Finland: 2009/2010-2012/2013. Weather, vol. 70, issue 1, pp 3-8.
Ludvigsen, J. & Klæboe, R. (2014). Extreme weather impacts on freight railways in Europe. Nat Hazards, vol. 70., pp- 767-787.
Nagy, E. & Csiszar, C. (2015). Analysis of delay causes in railway passenger transportation. Periodica Polytechnica Transportation Engineering, vol. 42. pp. 73-80.
Nelldal, B.-L. (2009). Kapacitetsanalys av järnvägsnätet i Sverige. Delrapport 3: Förslag till åtgärder för att öka kapaciteten på kort sikt. Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Nelldal, B.-L., Lindfeldt, A. & Lindfeldt, O. (2009). Kapacitetsanalys av järnvägsnätet i Sverige. Delrapport 1: Hur många tåg kan man köra? En analys av teoretisk och praktisk kapacitet. Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Nie, L. & Hansen, I. A. (2005). System analysis of train operations and track occupancy at railway stations. European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, vol. 1, issue 5, pp. 31-54.
Nikolic, I., Arsovski, S., Eric, M., Vujcic, S., Manojlovic, G. & Jovanovic, J. (2016). Overall railway infrastructure effectiveness as a quality factor for Serbian railways. Tehnicki vjesnik, vol. 2, pp. 547-554.
Nilsson, J.-E., Björklund, G., Pyddoke, R. & Vierth, I. (2015) Regress – en god idé i järnvägssektorn? VTI Rapport 850. Linköping: VTI.
Norrbin, P., Lin, J. & Parida, A. (2016). Infrastructure Robustness for Railway Systems. International Journal of Performability Engineering, vol. 13, issue 3, pp 249-264.
Olsson, N. & Haugland, H. (2004). Influencing factors on train punctuality - results from some Norwegian studies. Transport Policy, issue 11, pp. 387-397.
Olsson, N., Halse, A. H., Hegglund, P. M., Killi, M., van der Kooij, R., Landmark, A., Seim, A., Sørensen, A. Ø., Økland, A. & Østli, A. (2015). Punktlighet i jernbanen - hvert sekund teller. Oslo: SINTEF akademisk vorlag.
Oslakovic, I. S., ter Maat, H. W., Hartmann, A. & Dewulf, G. (2013). Risk Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Railway Infrastructure. Engineering Project Organization Conference 2013, July, 9-11, Devil’s Thumb Ranch, Colorado, USA.
Pachl, J. (2002). Railway Operation and Control. Mountlake Terrace: VTD Rail Publishing.
Palmqvist, C.-W., Olsson, N. O. E. & Hiselius, L. (2017a). An Empirical Study of Timetable Strategies and Their Effects on Punctuality. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Railway Operations Modelling and Analysis (RailLille 2017), April, 4-7, Lille, France.
Palmqvist, C.-W., Olsson, N. O. E. & Winslott Hiselius, L. (2017b). Punctuality problems from the perspective of timetable planners in Sweden. Paper presented at EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting 2017 (EWGT 2017), September, 4-6, Budapest, Hungary.
Parbo, J., Nielsen, O. & Prato, C. (2016). Passenger Perspectives in Railway Timetabling: A Literature Review. Transport Reviews, vol. 36, issue 4, pp. 500-526.
Qin, Y., Ma, X. & Jiang, S. (2017). A Stochastic Process Approach for Modeling Arrival Delay in Train Operations. Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting, January, 8-12, Washington, D. C., USA.
Rietveld, P., Bruinsma, F. & van Vuuren, D. (2001). Coping with unreliability in public transport chains: A case study for Netherlands. Transportation Research Part A, vol. 35, pp. 539-559.
Scheepmaker, G. M. & Goverde, R. M. (2015). The interplay between energy-efficient train control and scheduled running time supplements. Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, issue 5, pp. 225-239.
Schöbel, A. & Kratz, A. (2009). A bicriteria approach for robust timetabling. In Ahuja, R. K., Möhring, R. H. & Zaroliagis, C. D. (Eds.) Robust and online large-scale optimization, pp. 119-144. Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Stenström, C., Parida, A., Lundberg, J., & Kumar, U. (2015). Development of an integrity index for benchmarking and monitoring rail infrastructure: application of composite indicators. International Journal of Tail Transportation, vol. 3, issue 2, pp 61-80.
Swedish Transport Administration. (2017). Tillsammans för tåg i tid - Resultatrapport 2017. Borlänge: Trafikverket.
Tahvili, N. (2016). Winterization of Railways – issues and effects. Master thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.
Thaduri, A., Galar, D. & Kumar, U. (2015). Railway assets: A potential domain for big data analytics. Procedia Computer Science, vol. 53, pp 457-467.
Transport Analysis (2016). Punktlighet på järnväg 2015. Stockholm: Transport Analysis.
Veiseth, M., Olsson, N. O. E. & Saetermo, I. A. F. (2007). Infrastructure’s influence on rail punctuality. WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, vol. 96, pp 481-490.
Vekas, P., van der Vlerk, M. & Haneveld, W. (2012). Optimizing existing railway timetables by means of stochastic programming. Stochastic Programming EPrint Series, vol. 8.
Wiggenraad, I. P. B. (2001). Alighting and boarding times of passengers at Dutch railway stations. Delft, TRAIL Research School.
Vromans, 2005. Reliability of railway systems. Doctoral thesis, Erasmus Research Institute of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam.
Xia, Y., Van Ommeren, J. N. , Rietveld, P. & Verhagen, W. (2013). Railway infrastructure disturbances and train operator performance: the role of weather. Transportation Research Part D, vol. 18, pp. 97-102.
Xu, P., Corman, F. & Peng, Q. (2016). Analyzing Railway Disruptions and Their Impact on Delayed Traffic in Chinese High-Speed Railway. IFAC-PapersOnLine, volume 49, issue 3, pp 84-89.
Yuan, J. & Hansen, I. A. (2007). Optimizing capacity utilization of stations by estimating knock-on train delays. Transportation Research Part B, vol. 41, pp. 202-217.
Yuan, J. & Hansen, I. A. (2008). Closed form expression of optimal buffer times between scheduled trains at railway bottlenecks. 11th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, October, 12-15, Beijing, China.
Zakeri, G. & Olsson, N. O. E. (2017). Investigation of punctuality of local trains: The case of Oslo area. Paper presented at EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting 2017 (EWGT 2017), September, 4-6, Budapest, Hungary.
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