We introduce EETTlib, an instance library for the Energy-Efficient Train Timetabling problem. The task in this problem is to adjust a given timetable draft such that several key indicators relating to the energy consumption of the resulting railway traffic are minimized. These include peak power consumption, total energy consumption, loss in recuperation energy, fluctuation in power consumption as well as weighted versions of these optimization goals. To this end, departure times of the trains can be shifted slightly, and their velocity profiles on each trip can be modified, both according to which degrees of freedom the timetable planner allows. We provide real-world data originating from two research projects in this field, one with Deutsche Bahn AG, the most important railway company in Germany, the other with VAG Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft, the operator of public transport in the city of Nürnberg, Germany. In the first case, we provide 31 problem topologies representing local, regional and national subnetworks of German railway traffic. The second data set is from the underground system in Nürnberg, with timetable drafts corresponding to 12 different traffic scenarios. In both cases, our library contains data on the relevant operational constraints related to timetable construction such as dwell times, headway times or connection times. Furthermore, our instance library contains the data to support various possible choices for the objective function with respect to energy-efficiency. This results in several hundred benchmark instances for the EETT problem overall, which can be used by the scheduling and timetabling community to improve their models and algorithms. Many more relevant instances can easily be constructed out of these by varying problem parameters such as the allowable shift in departure time or the considered planning horizon. The resources of our library can be found under https://www.eettlib.fau.de.
Citation
@Article{EETTlib2021, author = {Andreas Bärmann and Patrick Gemander and Lukas Hager and Frederik Nöth and Oskar Schneider}, title = {EETTlib -- Energy-Efficient Train Timetabling Library}, journal = {submitted}, year = {2021}, OPTkey = {•}, OPTvolume = {•}, OPTnumber = {•}, OPTpages = {•}, OPTmonth = {•}, OPTnote = {•}, OPTannote = {•}}