DISPLIB: Train Dispatching benchmark library

Given a set of trains traveling on a railway, the Train Dispatching Problem is the operational problem that occurs when some trains have become delayed with respect to their prescribed timetable, and we want to make routing and scheduling adjustments to minimize the total delay on the railway. Effective management of dense railway traffic using algorithms has proven to be very hard.

DISPLIB is a problem definition, a file format, and a set of problem instances with the aim of allowing researchers and engineers to better compare and benchmark their algorithms.

The first part of the development of the DISPLIB is the competition described below, which will be an occasion to collect problem instances from a variety of sources and validate the suitability of the problem format in practice. Later, we intend to organize problem instances on this web page, along with more details and classifications, with the intention of creating a standard benchmark suite for train dispatching algorithms.

DISPLIB 2025 Competition

The DISPLIB 2025 competition ran from October 2024 to May 2025 and challenged participants to advance the state-of-the-art in real-time train dispatching. Two sets of problem instances were released in two phases (October 2024 and February 2025). The competition deadline has now passed and preliminary results are available below. Final results will be announced at ODS Conference, 1-4 September 2025.

Timeline

Phase 2 results

We had 15 great teams participating in the competition, of which 11 endured to the end of Phase 2 and submitted a report describing their algorithms. All the reports were well written and the organizing committee is very impressed with the great efforts and grateful for all the contributions. Out of these 11 candidates, the scientific committee selected three finalist teams who were outstanding both in solution quality and in describing interesting and novel ideas used in the computations.

The finalists are (listed in alphabetical order):

The final ranking of the finalists will be revealed at the ODS conference, which takes place 1-4 September. Detailed competition results, information about problem instances, and all best known solutions will also be published on this web page shortly after the conference. The ranking of solutions for the rest of the teams are as follows:

team line1 critical line1 full line2 close line2 headway line3 line4 small line4 large line5 line6 line7 small line7 large line8 small line8 large SUM
Finalist #1 ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ ♠ 894
Finalist #2 ♣ ♥ ♦ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ ♠ ♣ 880
Finalist #3 ♥ ♦ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ ♠ ♣ ♥ 878
Team L

László Kálmán Trautsch

51 65 50 76 23 154 55 51 56 14 5 30 630
The TRAINees

Lina Breuer, Elias Kaiser

23 3 40 68 49 64 124 4 6 10 14 26 34 465
TCS Research Railways team

Aakash Swami, Gajendra Malviya

1 25 38 96 2 1 30 35 34 34 296
WUB (Wien, Udine, Bologna)

Vera Hemmelmayr, Hai Yen Luu, Roberto Maria Rosati, Sara Ceschia, Andrea Schaerf, Alex Fabián Barrales Araneda, Valentina Cacchiani

51 34 4 10 12 25 33 16 11 20 24 14 15 269
STR

BiSheng He, Jie Cao, Xinyi Guo, Yonglong Huang, Qun Zhuo, Xinyu Li

1 5 14 33 60 17 16 6 7 11 22 192
Brannon King

Brannon King

19 19 14 31 23 19 26 151
AWSOME

Ivo Stammis

6 1 20 17 3 47
Delayed Train

Péter Dobrovoczki, Péter Györgyi, Markó Horváth, Tamás Kis

4 3 3 10
The A-Team

Andres Espinoza, Alaina Gordon, Aleksandr Kazachkov, Yuyang Sun

3 3 6
Railmen

Chongshuang Chen, Feng Xue, Hua Meng, Xinyue Qin

1 2 1 4
RailwayRam

Hariharan Subramanian, Sachin Jayaswal

0
MILP

Giovanni Ciaramella

0

Phase 1 results

Eight teams submitted solutions within the Phase 1 deadline. The organizers are very grateful for the high quality of these submissions. Please note that these scores were computed completely independently of the Phase 2 scores.

team line1_critical line1_full line2_close line2_headway line3 SUM
openbus

Florian Fuchs, Thomas Dubach, Jan Lordieck, Bernardo Martin-Iradi

76 95 80 77 42 370
CSLS

Carolin Scholl, Luka Stärk

76 76 62 61 42 317
The TRAINees

Lina Breuer, Sebastian Brunke, Elias Kaiser, Felix Michel

43 31 36 64 14 188
WUB (Wien, Udine, Bologna)

Vera Hemmelmayr, Hai Yen Luu, Roberto Maria Rosati, Sara Ceschia, Andrea Schaerf, Alex Fabián Barrales Araneda, Valentina Cacchiani

76 10 45 4 4 139
Delayed Train

Péter Dobrovoczki, Péter Györgyi, Markó Horváth, Tamás Kis

8 50 20 30 18 126
TCS Research Railways team

Aakash Swami, Gajendra Malviya

20 23 10 14 26 93
RailwayRam

Hariharan Subramanian, Sachin Jayaswal

5 9 15 1 30
The A-Team

Andres Espinoza, Alaina Gordon, Aleksandr Kazachkov, Yuyang Sun

0

Files

Organization

Scientific committee

An international panel of experts of railway optimization will evaluate the submissions and select a group of finalists (see the competition document for details). The panel consists of:

Organizing committee

The competition is organized by Bjørnar Luteberget, Giorgio Sartor, Oddvar Kloster, and Carlo Mannino, and is funded by SINTEF . Get in touch with us by email if you find any errors or want to contribute new problem instances: <displib2025competition@gmail.com>