Capacity analysis of several bottlenecks of the Belgian railway network

Nodes and lines next to dense railway areas directly influence the punctuality of trains in the dense railway areas, and hence also in other parts of the network. The available infrastructure and the current utilization of these bottlenecks considerably restrict the possibility to make structural changes in timetabling and line planning, for example based on robustness, punctuality or a higher level of service. Besides, these bottlenecks are also very sensitive to transmit delay from one train to the other, the so-called knock-on delays.

In this project, we study several nodes and lines around the Brussels railway area. A first goal is to determine to which extent and why certain neighboring zones form a restriction for improvement in Brussels and how often knock-on delays are encountered. To which extent can timetables and routes be changed in these zones to make improvements elsewhere. If these zones are effectively very restrictive and hence determine a priori almost entirely the timetable and routing, no space is left for improvement and small delays have large consequences for other trains. Therefore a second goal is to determine adjustments that can eliminate these bottlenecks. These adjustment can be related to infrastructure, timetabling, coupling and decoupling of trains, planning principles etc… As last, the influence of planned expansions of the customer service or infrastructure on these bottlenecks is investigated.