Service Planning

Offering passengers an attractive rail product means creating coordinated timetables and offering different types of train services. The highest level of integration is achieved when trains and buses arrive simultaneously, or within a short period of time at hub stations. There, passengers can continue their journey by a connecting means of transport.

Coordinating various rail services (commuter, regional and national train services plus goods transport) and reviewing operational structures, while identifying any need for upgrading the infrastructure, is an interactive process. Complete optimization of products in a highly integrated environment is a highly redundant task. The density of services in metropolitan areas often results in capacity bottlenecks and other constraints. Local changes often affect large regions or even the national network.

The first net-wide studies have mainly been developed manually. Computer tools were used solely for the drawing of the results. Nowadays, net-wide planning without modern planning systems is completely unthinkable. With the development of Viriato, SMA has set an internationally recognised milestone.