Reliable Train Delay Forecasting with Conformal Prediction
摘要
Train delays cause significant economic and operational impacts. Accurate prediction of these delays is therefore essential for improving railway service reliability and supporting effective decision-making. Thus, this chapter introduces a novel approach combining tree-based machine learning (ML) models with Conformal Prediction (CP) to estimate train delays by predicting train travel times between consecutive stations. Using real-world data from over 12.8 million production service records collected over a period of 3 years and 8 months, the proposed approach achieved a prediction accuracy of 20 s, 90% of the time. Furthermore, CP delivers statistically valid prediction intervals with an average width of 19.3 s at a 90% confidence level, successfully meeting the target coverage as demonstrated by empirical results.