TY - JOUR A1 - Masing, Berenike A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Bortoletto, Enrico T1 - Computing All Shortest Passenger Routes with a Tropical Dijkstra Algorithm JF - EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics N2 - Given a public transportation network, which and how many passenger routes can potentially be shortest paths, when all possible timetables are taken into account? This question leads to shortest path problems on graphs with interval costs on their arcs and is closely linked to multi-objective optimization. We introduce a Dijkstra algorithm based on polynomials over the tropical semiring that computes complete or minimal sets of efficient paths. We demonstrate that this approach is computationally feasible by employing it on the public transport network of the city of Wuppertal and instances of the benchmarking set TimPassLib, and we evaluate the resulting sets of passenger routes. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejtl.2025.100163 VL - 14 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bortoletto, Enrico A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Masing, Berenike T1 - The Tropical and Zonotopal Geometry of Periodic Timetables JF - Discrete & Computational Geometry N2 - The Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP) is the standard mathematical tool for optimizing periodic timetables in public transport. A solution to a PESP instance consists of three parts: a periodic timetable, a periodic tension, and integer offset values. While the space of periodic tensions has received much attention in the past, we explore geometric properties of the other two components. The general aim of this paper is to establish novel connections between periodic timetabling and discrete geometry. Firstly, we study the space of feasible periodic timetables as a disjoint union of polytropes. These are polytopes that are convex both classically and in the sense of tropical geometry. We then study this decomposition and use it to outline a new heuristic for PESP, based on neighbourhood relations of the polytropes. Secondly, we recognize that the space of fractional cycle offsets is in fact a zonotope, and then study its zonotopal tilings. These are related to the hyperrectangle of fractional periodic tensions, as well as the polytropes of the periodic timetable space, and we detail their interplay. To conclude, we also use this new understanding to give tight lower bounds on the minimum width of an integral cycle basis. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00454-024-00686-2 VL - 73 SP - 719 EP - 763 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Bortoletto, Enrico A1 - van Lieshout, Rolf Nelson A1 - Masing, Berenike A1 - Lindner, Niels T1 - Periodic Event Scheduling with Flexible Infrastructure Assignment T2 - 24th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2024) N2 - We present novel extensions of the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP) that integrate the assignment of activities to infrastructure elements. An application of this is railway timetabling, as station and platform capacities are limited and need to be taken into account. We show that an assignment of activities to platforms can always be made periodic, and that it can be beneficial to allow larger periods for the assignment than for the timetable. We present mixed-integer programming formulations for the general problem, as well as for the practically relevant case when multiple platforms can be considered equivalent, for which we present a bipartite matching approach. We finally test and compare these models on real-world instances. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2024.4 VL - 123 SP - 4:1 EP - 4:18 ER - TY - THES A1 - Bortoletto, Enrico T1 - The tropical tiling of periodic timetable space and a dual modulo network simplex algorithm N2 - We propose a tropical interpretation of the solution space of the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem as a collection of polytropes, making use of the characterization of tropical cones as weighted digraph polyhedra. General and geometric properties of the polytropal collection are inspected and understood in connection with the combinatorial properties of the underlying periodic event scheduling instance. Novel algorithmic ideas are presented and tested, making use of the aforementioned theoretical results to solve and optimize the problem. Y1 - 2021 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Bortoletto, Enrico A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Masing, Berenike T1 - Tropical Neighbourhood Search: A New Heuristic for Periodic Timetabling T2 - 22nd Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2022) N2 - Periodic timetabling is a central aspect of both the long-term organization and the day-to-day operations of a public transportation system. The Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP), the combinatorial optimization problem that forms the mathematical basis of periodic timetabling, is an extremely hard problem, for which optimal solutions are hardly ever found in practice. The most prominent solving strategies today are based on mixed-integer programming, and there is a concurrent PESP solver employing a wide range of heuristics [Borndörfer et al., 2020]. We present tropical neighborhood search (tns), a novel PESP heuristic. The method is based on the relations between periodic timetabling and tropical geometry [Bortoletto et al., 2022]. We implement tns into the concurrent solver, and test it on instances of the benchmarking library PESPlib. The inclusion of tns turns out to be quite beneficial to the solver: tns is able to escape local optima for the modulo network simplex algorithm, and the overall share of improvement coming from tns is substantial compared to the other methods available in the solver. Finally, we provide better primal bounds for five PESPlib instances. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2022.3 VL - 106 SP - 3:1 EP - 3:19 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Bortoletto, Enrico A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Masing, Berenike T1 - Periodic Timetabling with Cyclic Order Constraints T2 - 23rd Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2023) N2 - Periodic timetabling for highly utilized railway networks is a demanding challenge. We formulate an infrastructure-aware extension of the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP) by requiring that not only events, but also activities using the same infrastructure must be separated by a minimum headway time. This extended problem can be modeled as a mixed-integer program by adding constraints on the sum of periodic tensions along certain cycles, so that it shares some structural properties with standard PESP. We further refine this problem by fixing cyclic orders at each infrastructure element. Although the computational complexity remains unchanged, the mixed-integer programming model then becomes much smaller. Furthermore, we also discuss how to find a minimal subset of infrastructure elements whose cyclic order already prescribes the order for the remaining parts of the network, and how cyclic order information can be modeled in a mixed-integer programming context. In practice, we evaluate the impact of cyclic orders on a real-world instance on the S-Bahn Berlin network, which turns out to be computationally fruitful. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2023.7 VL - 115 SP - 7:1 EP - 7:18 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Bortoletto, Enrico A1 - Lindner, Niels ED - Voigt, Guido ED - Fliedner, Malte ED - Haase, Knut ED - Brüggemann, Wolfgang ED - Hoberg, Kai ED - Meissner, Jörn T1 - Scaling and Rounding Periodic Event Scheduling Instances to Different Period Times T2 - Operations Research Proceedings 2023 N2 - The Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP) is a notoriously hard combinatorial optimization problem, essential for the design of periodic timetables in public transportation. The coefficients of the integer variables in the standard mixed integer linear programming formulations of PESP are the period time, e.g., 60 for a horizon of one hour with a resolution of one minute. In many application scenarios, lines with different frequencies have to be scheduled, leading to period times with many divisors. It then seems natural to consider derived instances, where the period time is a divisor of the original one, thereby smaller, and bounds are scaled and rounded accordingly. To this end, we identify two rounding schemes: wide and tight. We then discuss the approximation performance of both strategies, in theory and practice. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58405-3_51 SP - 397 EP - 402 ER -