The Use of Optimization to Improve Freight Railroad Service Reliability

Outline

Slide 3

Slide 4

Slide 5

"However,"

Major Challenge facing Railroads

Why is Service Reliability Important?

How have railroads improved Service Reliability?

Railroading 101: How does a car get moved?

Railroading 101: Decisions to be made

Uses of OR Models

Uses of OR Models, cont.

How do Airlines and Railroads Compare?

How do Airlines and Railroads Compare?, cont.

How do Airlines and Railroads Compare?, cont.

Use of Optimization to Improve Reliability

How does Dynamic Car Scheduling differ from current Car Scheduling approaches?

Do multiple routing options really exist?

Slide 20

Do multiple routing options really exist?

What percentage of origin-destination pairs have alternate routes that have elapsed times within 10 hours of the shortest path?

Dynamic Scheduling

Summary