Preliminary results on different perspectives in managing rail disruptions

Rail systems represent a useful tool for reducing the use of private cars especially in urban and metropolitan areas. However, since a faulty train cannot be easily removed or overtaken, in the case of rail system failures, restoring operative conditions could take a very long time and result in considerable delays for passengers. In this context, our proposal is to provide rail systems managers (i.e. dispatchers) with an off-line procedure which adopts a microsimulation approach for analysing the most frequent breakdown conditions and suggests in advance the optimal intervention strategies to adopt. In particular, different perspectives are proposed and applied in the case of a real metro line in the south of Italy.