In the Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, Tamme Emunds and Nils Nießen introduce an innovative approach for evaluating the performance of railway stations independently of timetables.

The model is based on a continuous-time Markov approach and, for the first time, enables a holistic analysis of entire railway stations-a valuable tool for infrastructure operators for planning and decision support.

The open-access publication in the special issue on RailDresden 2025 can be downloaded here.

Mr. Gonçalo Soares Roque passed his doctoral examination on August 04th, 2025. The title of his dissertation is: "Estimating the Environmental Impacts of Aircraft Operations around Airports: A novel Framework and its Application ". The Institute of Transport Science congratulates quite cordially!

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Nils Nießen, together with Pengling Wang, Yutao Ye, Andrea D'Ariano and Pieter Vansteenwegen, has published a new article entitled "Fare system selection and line planning for new suburban rail lines considering the supply-demand interactions" in the journal Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.
You are cordially invited to read or download the article. Access is free of charge until 23.08.2025.

As part of the "Planning and Operation of Airports" module, the CAST group exercise once again provided hands-on teaching this semester - with an exciting guest lecture by Tobias Pötter, Senior Aviation Consultant at the Airport Research Center (ARC) from Aachen.

In his lecture, Mr. Pötter offered key insights into terminal processes, passenger flows and capacity assessments using the CAST software and used real simulation projects from everyday working life to illustrate his explanations.

We would like to thank Mr. Pötter for the visit, the shared expertise and the valuable insights into his field of work.

As part of our Institute Internship: Railway Engineering we visited the Rurtalbahn in Düren on May 28, 2025. The trip to the construction site in Zülpich took place on a new hydrogen bus. Many thanks to the Rurtalbahn employees who made this visit possible.

Mrs. Wiebke Lenze passed her doctoral examination on Mai 26th, 2025. The title of her dissertation is: "Determination and Improvement of Quality in Rail Operations". The Institute of Transport Science congratulates quite cordially!

We are pleased to present the latest research by Tamme Emunds and Nils Nießen: "Utilizing phase-type distributions for queueing-based railway junction performance determination", published in the Journal of Rail Transport Planning and Management (JRTPM).

This study enhances the queueing theory approach for evaluating railway infrastructure performance at junctions by introducing phase-type distributions to model arrival and service processes. The findings demonstrate that this method enables infrastructure managers to more precisely assess timetable-independent capacity in the early planning stages of railway junction infrastructure.

The full publication is available in Open Access, and the research data can be accessed online.

The Institute of Transport Science (VIA) is pleased to announce that two of its contributions were highly recognized at the 11th International Conference on Railway Operations Modelling and Analysis (RailDresden 2025).

The article titled "Determine line plan and fare pricing strategies for newly constructed lines with dynamic interactions of passenger demand with travel time and ticket costs", authored by Pengling Wang, Yutao Ye, and Nils Nießen, was awarded as the best paper of the conference. This outstanding work highlights innovative approaches to optimizing line plans and fare strategies, showcasing the dynamic interactions between passenger demand, travel time, and ticket costs.

Additionally, the contribution "A queueing-based approach for timetable-independent railway station performance analysis" by Tamme Emunds and Nils Nießen achieved third place in the competition for best papers. This article introduces a comprehensive approach to timetable-independent performance analysis of railway infrastructure in stations.

The top ten papers from the conference have been invited to be published in the Special Issue on the Best Papers of RailDresden 2025 in the journal "Rail Transport Planning & Management", A complete list of these top ten contributions can be found on the website of the organizer, the International Association of Railway Operations Research.

VIA warmly congratulates all authors on their success and valuable scientific work!