Paris Orleans Limoges Toulouse (POLT)

The Paris-Orleans-Limoges corridor is the longest non-high speed intercity corridor in France. It is a very important transport link supporting economic and social development in central France. The railway infrastructure is being renewed to help improve service on the corridor.

In this project trenolab supported Alius Consulting in developing short term recommendations for improving service quality. We started by analysing the current timetable and operations to identify problems and weaknesses. Next, we estimated the relationship between capacity and delays; this relationship was used to identify the maximum service that can be operated without exceeding the line’s quality and delay targets.

trenolab developed a microscopic simulation of the line and used it to test the impact of several strategies for improving service quality including reducing departure delays, new EMU rolling stock, as well as different combinations of temporary speed restrictions. The results were used to help develop the 2019 timetable. Our model showed that the new timetable would be a significant improvement over the existing timetable, and results confirm this finding.