Keynote Talks

Sustainable passenger rail transportation

Prof. Dr. Anita Schöbel (RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau)

Moving travelers efficiently, with low costs, and respecting environmental goals like CO2 emissions is one of the challenging problems our society faces today. In this talk we sketch how optimization approaches can help to make our nowadays railway transportation more sustainable. A first goal is to make railway transportation more attractive for travelers, in particular more attractive than using other modes of transport such as flights or the private cars. Travelers prefer fast, reliable, safe and affordable transportation. Here we sketch research that aims at minimizing travel times and increases reliability while respecting budget constraints. In this context, we show that integrating different planning stages may help to further improve efficiency of railway transportation. A second step is to make public transport modes themselves more energy-efficient. We sketch some first ideas on how to use regenerative energy which leads to new and challenging timetable problems. The objectives in this problem are two-fold: Firstly, want to minimize the traveling times of the passengers, but, secondly, we also want to use as much regenerative energy as possible. Finally, for providing sustainable transport for the society as a whole, we cannot look isolated at railway optimization but have on the one hand to consider the first mile, and, on the other hand, we also have to look at other modes of transport besides railway transportation. We sketch a first model in which such different transport modes are considered simultaneously.

CV of Prof. Dr. Anita Schöbel: Anita Schöbel is professor for Applied Mathematics at the RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau and she is head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM. The ITWM has 550 employees dealing with industrial research projects in applied mathematics with a strong focus on mobility. At Fraunhofer Society, Anita Schöbel coordinates the strategic research area Next Generation Computing and the quantum computing competence network. In 2019 and 2020 she has been president of the German Operations Research Society (GOR).  Currently, she is president of EURO (Association of European Operational Research Societies). Among others, she is member of the senate of the national research data infrastructure (NFDI), and AI pilot for mobility of the state Rhineland-Palatinate (RLP). She is also a member of the council for technology of RLP. In her research, Anita focuses on discrete optimization in public transport. She has been PI in many industrial and research projects, among them the European projects ARRIVAL, EASIER and OptALI and cooperations with India. She also coordinated a research unit (Forschungsgruppe) on Integrated Transportation funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and currently coordinates a ministry-funded project on synchronizing different modes of transport. Anita is in the steering committees of the ATMOS and CASPT conference series. She is author of 170 refereed research articles and 9 books.

Foundations and Frontiers in Urban Rail and Freight Rail: Theoretical Advances, AI Innovations, and Future Directions for Multi-Modal Integration

Prof. Dr. Xuesong Zhou (Arizona State University)

Urban rail transit and freight rail systems are at the forefront of evolving mobility and logistics networks, facing growing demands for efficiency, resilience, and seamless integration. Drawing from an extensive survey of recent advancements, this talk will explore the theoretical foundations of passenger and freight rail operations, with a focus on congestion management, automation, and multi-modal connectivity. It will highlight key optimization and simulation models that have shaped the field over the past decade and examine the transformative role of AI in enhancing infrastructure resilience, behavioral adaptation, and financial sustainability. Additionally, the talk will discuss emerging interdisciplinary opportunities, including low-altitude air mobility, underground logistics, and dynamic pricing strategies. By bridging innovations in AI, operations research, and transportation engineering, this keynote will provide a forward-looking perspective on the challenges and opportunities that will shape the future of urban and freight rail systems in an increasingly connected and autonomous transportation landscape.

CV of Prof. Dr. Xuesong Zhou: Xuesong (Simon) Zhou is a Professor of Transportation Systems at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, Arizona. Dr. Zhou's research focuses on advancing methodologies in multimodal transportation planning, with applications spanning dynamic traffic assignment, traffic estimation and prediction, large-scale routing, and rail scheduling. Dr. Zhou has served as an Associate Editor of Transportation Research Part C, is currently the Executive Editor-in-Chief of Urban Rail Transit, and an Editorial Board Member of Transportation Research Part B. He has also chaired the INFORMS Rail Application Section (2016 and 2025) and currently serves as a subcommittee chair of the TRB Committee on Transportation Network Modeling (AEP40). Dr. Zhou, with an H-index of 60 and 11,000 citations, leads the ASU Transportation+AI Lab, where his team developed widely-used open-source tools such as DTALite, NEXTA, and OSM2GMNS, collectively amassing over 100,000 downloads and deployments by planning agencies and DOTs. He actively fosters collaboration in the field, serving as the 2023 TRB Innovations in Travel Analysis and Planning Conference chair and as a board member of the Zephyr Foundation.

Intergenerational transport transition project: Can rail support this?

Prof. Dr. Arnd Stephan (TU Dresden)

The railroads are rightly ascribed a key role in achieving climate-friendly mobility. In order to fulfill this expectation, the railways must be upgraded consistently and quickly. This requires the modernization and expansion of the infrastructure on the one hand and the continuous procurement of new rail vehicles on the other. This is the only way to provide customers with a high-quality and reliable transport service that will remain competitive in the future.

Despite great expectations for the future of the railways in Germany in terms of the transport and energy transition, the daily challenges remain enormous: large-scale corridor renovations are pending within extremely short periods of time, digitalization must be continued and, at the same time, the increasing demand for passenger and freight transport must be met in a high-quality manner.

Basically, the signs are good:

• Rail is an important and efficient sector. It has social significance.
• Rail can do "much and fast" – that is its trademark in the transport market.
• Rail is largely electro-mobile and already runs more than 90 % of the transport volume in Germany on almost 70 % renewable electricity. 
• Rail has long-lasting operating resources. The capital tied up in it provides long-term benefits - it is not a throwaway society.
• Rail can relieve the noisy and hectic roads – but not replace them.
• Rail currently has strong political support.

But: the rail is not very flexible. It hardly seems agile in the 21st century:

• It all takes far too long: the decision-making process, the new construction, the approval, the changes to the existing assets – technically and operationally. And all this against a backdrop of rapid technical and social development: new forms of mobility, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, …
• We just see a decline in operating quality – at least in Germany. And this will continue for a while, as the urgently needed renovations are restricting the performance of the network.
• Due to 200 years of railroads, there are considerable inertia and preservations of property rights of the stakeholders.

Although there is a great vision for the future of railways it is to expect that not everything will always run smoothly over the next years. We need to make good and far-sighted arguments so that society and politicians continue to support and fund the expansion of the railways.

The presentation highlights the current challenges facing the railroads in Germany and outlines the prospects for the future.

CV of Prof. Dr. Arnd Stephan: 1985 – 1990: studies in electrical engineering / electrical railways at University for transportation and traffic sciences „Friedrich List“ Dresden, 1990 – 1993: PhD at TU Dresden, 1995: doctorate , 1993 – 2008:project engineer, senior expert, head of branch office and authorized officer, IFB Institut für Bahntechnik GmbH, Dresden, since 1995: approved expert by German Federal Railway Authority EBA for electrical power supply installations and MAGLEV technology, since 2004: Managing Director of Competence Center for High Performance Rail Systems at TU Dresden, since 2008: Full Professor at TU Dresden for Electric Railways, since 2012: Managing Director of IFB Institut für Bahntechnik GmbH, Berlin and Dresden, since 2020 Chairman of the Board of German Railway Cluster Rail.S e.V.