Diagnosis and assessment of operations control interventions : framework and applications to a high frequency metro line

Service control, the task of implementing the timetable in daily operations on a metro line, plays a key role in service delivery, as it determines the quality of the service as provided to passengers. This thesis proposes a framework for the study of rail service control which builds on the integration and analysis of data from multiple sources and on background knowledge about service control. The framework takes into account the decision environment in which service control takes place and acknowledges that the reliability of the system depends on many factors which are endogenous to it, aspects previously not recognized in a comprehensive manner by researchers and practitioners alike. This research makes use of automatically generated operational and passenger data, which are increasingly available and accessible to transit agencies and allow for addressing questions in service control from multiple perspectives. As a result, this study takes a distinctly different approach than previous research, which has mostly focused on individual service control strategies and relied heavily on modeling and on simplifying assumptions about the objectives and constraints of service control on a metro line. The developed framework consists of four main elements. First, the controller's decision environment is integrated and described based on an extended visit of the author to a control center. Second, an algorithm for reconstructing train operations from signaling data and identifying service control interventions is presented. Third, a measure for assessing the impact of the interventions on operations is introduced.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Carrel, André, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nigel H.M. Wilson, Rabi G. Mishalani and John P. Attanucci.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/55152

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/55152