Predicting and mitigating small fluctuations in station dwell times

On busy railway networks, exceeding station dwell times by only a few seconds can adversely affect overall network performance. However, while these performance impacts are well known, the causes of small dwell time perturbations are not widely understood (or are not widely communicated at an operational level) and exhibit a high level of spatial and temporal variation. A lack of information and understanding makes it difficult to implement effective mitigation measures to reduce the occurrence and impact of such delays.