I am currently attending the RailwayAge & Systra conference on Operations Analysis & Modeling, being held at the Marriott Courtyard in Center City Philadelphia.  Yesterday (July 20th), I had an opportunity to make a presentation on ”Equipment Deployment Optimization for Passenger Railways.”

Creating software for assigning the right type of equipment to each passenger train can help in improving overall passenger comfort, reducing operational cost, and in creating a tool to help service planners develop better schedules.  The keys to making an equipment assignment optimizer is to recognize the variety of costs and constraints, and to effectively map passenger demand to new timetables.  This presentation highlights these key concepts and explains the important items needed for effective optimization and the supporting passenger demand model.

If you have any questions on passenger demand modeling or on rail equipment cycling optimization, please feel free to post a comment here or contact me at: marc.meketon@oliverwyman.com.