Analytical methods and simulation approaches for determining the capacity of the Rome-Florence "direttissima" line

In this paper, different analytical methods for the determination of the hourly practical capacity of a high speed railway line are addressed and compared. Furthermore, for the assessment of capacity consumption based on the UIC 406 method and on the simulation of rail traffic, the features offered by the OpenTrack© railway simulation software are exploited. The case study concerns the Rome-Florence “Direttissima” high speed railway line, the first example of high speed railway infrastructure in Europe and a rare example of mixed use with the circulation of different categories of trains. Such characteristics distinguish this line compared to the more modern Italian high speed lines interconnected with it.