USDOT Region V Regional University Transportation Center

Dr. Xuesong Zhou (University of Utah) delivered a lecture at Purdue University on May 11, 2010, as part of the NEXTRANS Seminar Series.  The seminar, titled, "High-speed Passenger Trains on Freight Tracks: Modeling Issues On Capacity Analysis, Train Timetabling and Real-time Dispatching," was held at 3 p.m. in Room 1252 of the Purdue Department of Civil Engineering.

There are two different modes of introducing a new high-speed passenger train system: 1) constructing a dedicated high-speed passenger train corridor, or 2) operating high-speed passenger trains on existing freight rail lines. The first mode has been widely used in Asia and Europe. The second mixed-use strategy is now considered an economically viable option for the U.S. to initiate and accelerate its high-speed rail services. This talk addresses three important operational elements in the context of shared-use tracks: capacity estimation, train timetabling and real-time train dispatching. The existing optimization and simulation-based models are first reviewed from the perspective of operations research. Then there is a discussion of potential scheduling complexities between passenger train timetabling and on-demand freight train dispatching.

Dr. Xuesong Zhou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Utah. He previously served as a Traffic Data Architect and Senior Software Engineer at Dash Navigation, Inc, designing and developing the first commercialized internet-connected GPS navigation system in the U.S. He is also the co-inventor of the Key 2 Safe Driving technology. Dr. Zhou’s research interests include dynamic traffic assignment, real-time traffic prediction and rail scheduling. In 1995, he designed the first train timetabling system for the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway in China. He is currently the Co-Chair of the IEEE ITS Society Technical Committee on Traffic and Travel Management and is a member of the TRB Committee on Transportation Network Modeling (ADB30).

Follow link below to view Dr. Zhou's presentation.