MISTA 2009 Conference Program Committee

Multidisciplinary International Conference on Scheduling : Theory and Applications (MISTA 2009)
10-12 August 2009, Dublin, Ireland
3.1 Optimizing capability
To most train planners, next to validity what they look for is efficiency in the schedules. Pilot trials of
TrainTRACS have demonstrated to the TOCs very significant efficiency savings. Because of commercial
sensitivity, TOCs usually would not be making public the saving figures. They would also, sometimes quite
rightly, argue that there are other factors than using TrainTRACS in achieving the savings. In some cases, the
TOC may decide not to implement reduction of their crews employed immediately (therefore ‘no saving’!), but
to use the excess crews to increase the number of spare cover turns. In any case, the UK train industry is very
self-referencing and the reputation of the tools and systems they use does get widely spread. In the following, a
very recent case study is presented in which the schedule efficiency achieved by TrainTRACS was quite
remarkable.
Case Study: Virgin West Coast
Virgin West Coast operates an inter-city network from London along the West Coast up to Scotland serving the
major cities of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. The West Coast Route Modernisation project
(Modern Railway 2009), which has spanned over many years, was being completed by the end of 2008. The
network capacity has been increased and trains are now able to pass through some previously bottlenecks at high
speeds. As a result, journey times are shortened and Virgin was committed to a new set of timetables with vastly
increased services (“Virgin High Frequency” (VHF) services). The number of weekday services was increased
from 252 to 335, Saturday services was increased from 230 to 300, and Sunday services goes from 155 to 230
trains (Modern Railways 2008). Most notably, with a train every 20 minutes between London, Birmingham and
Manchester in both directions it has become the most frequent long-distance inter-city service in Europe.
Around late 2007, Virgin began crew planning for the VHF timetable. With a 32% increase in services,
even though they could manage (because of shortened journey times and improved maintenance facilities) with
the existing fleet of trains, Virgin expected an increase in crew size. However, there was an obvious need to try
minimizing the increase. From another franchise Virgin Cross Country, Virgin had prior experience of trialling
and adoption of TrainTRACS. (When Cross Country’s franchise expired, Arriva won the new franchise and they
continued using TrainTRACS.) Hence, a pilot trial was carried out between January and March 2008 using
TrainTRACS for planning the crew schedules for the VHS services. The results of the pilot trial was very
carefully scrutinised and management was impressed and confident that TrainTRACS was the tool they needed.
Virgin quickly adopted TrainTRACS and used it in-house for planning the VHF crew schedules in full scale.
The Virgin onboard train crews include drivers, train managers and catering staff. Part of the train crew
planning involves negotiations on changing some of the labour rules. Several key changes were accepted by the
train crews. At the end only half a dozen more train managers were needed (Modern Railways 2009) and there
was no increase in the other categories - out of a total of over 1600 onboard train crews, for the whole VHF crew
schedule. The VHF timetable, covered by crew schedules produced by TrainTRACS, went live in December
2008.
The Virgin West Coast problem is highly constrained. As an example of schedule efficiency achieved by
TrainTRACS, one of the Virgin driver labour rules is so-called “no double tripping”, meaning that a driver
cannot be scheduled to drive the same route section in the same direction for more than once within a shift.
Before the VHF timetable, many driver shifts would only cover one major city destination from London between
breaks, and the breaks at London were typically very long (up to about 3 hours). The new driver schedules still
adhere to the “no double tripping” rule, but some “triangular working” between London and two major city
destinations would be covered, resulting in the removal of long breaks.
3.2 Solution operability
For a crew schedule to be operable means that basically
• No train service or empty movements would be without crew cover
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