An Auctioning Approach to Railway Slot Allocation
Appeared in: Competition and Regulation in Network Industries 1 (2006) 163-196
| 05-45 | Ralf Borndörfer, Martin Grötschel, Sascha Lukac, Kay Mitusch, Thomas Schlechte, Sören Schultz, Andreas Tanner
An Auctioning Approach to Railway Slot Allocation Appeared in: Competition and Regulation in Network Industries 1 (2006) 163-196 | |
Abstract: We present an approach to implement an auction of railway slots.
Railway network, train driving characteristics, and safety requirements are described
by a simplified,
but still
complex macroscopic model. In this environment, slots are modelled as combinations
of scheduled track
segments. The auction design builds on the iterative combinatorial auction. However,
combinatorial bids are restricted to some types of slot bundles
that realize positive synergies between slots.
We present a bidding language that allows bidding for these slot bundles. An integer
programming approach is proposed to solve the winner
determination problem of our auction. Computational results for auction simulations
in the
Hannover-Fulda-Kassel area of the German railway network
give evidence that auction approaches can induce a more efficient use of railway
capacity.
Keywords: Railway Slot Allocation,
Train Dispatching,
Combinatorial Auctions
MSC: 90C27