Abderrahman Ait-Ali

About me

Abderrahman is a researcher at VTI - The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute and LiU - Linköping University whose work integrates transport economics (socio-economic evaluations, cost–benefit and life-cycle costing) with mathematical optimisation for capacity allocation, timetabling, maintenance planning and traffic-information in public transport and railways.

He holds an engineering diploma (in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics) from Grenoble Institute of Technology - INP (Ensimag), an M.Sc. (in Computer Science and Engineering) from KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, and a PhD (in Infra-Informatics) from Linköping University. He also engages in linguistics, photography and open-source contributions such as Wikimedia (Wikipedia and Wikidata).

For more details, see CV.

Selected journal papers

• Ait-Ali, A., Peterson, A. (2025). Assessing the effects of traffic information to passengers: a literature review. Transportation Research Procedia, 82, 24–42.

  Paper

• Ait-Ali, A., Odolinski , K., Pålsson , B., & Torstensson , P. (2024). Evaluating the mix of maintenance activities on railway crossings with respect to life-cycle costs. European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, 24(1), 1–29.

  Paper

• H-Nia, S., Krishna, V. V., Odolinski, K., Torstensson, P. T., Ait-Ali, A., Sundholm, L., Larsson Kråik, P.-O. & Stichel, S. 2023. Simulation-based evaluation of maintenance strategies from a life cycle cost perspective. Wear, 532-533, 205120.

  Paper

• Ait-Ali, A., & Lidén, T. (2022). Minimal utilization rate for railway maintenance windows: a cost-benefit approach. European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, 22(2), 108–131.

  Paper

• Ait-Ali, A., Eliasson, J., Warg, J., (2021), Are commuter train timetables consistent with passengers’ valuations of waiting times and in-vehicle crowding?, Transport Policy.

  Paper

• Ait-Ali, A., Eliasson, J., (2021), The value of additional data for public transport origin–destination matrix estimation, Public Transport.

  Paper

• Ait-Ali, A., Eliasson, J., (2021), European Railway Deregulation: An overview of market organization and capacity allocation, Transportmetrica A: Transport Science.

  Paper

• Ait-Ali, A., Warg, J., Eliasson, J., (2020), Pricing commercial train path requests based on societal costs, Transportation Research Part A, 132, 452-464.

  Paper

  Preprint

• Ait-Ali, A., Lindberg, P. O., Eliasson, J., Nilsson, J., Peterson, A., (2020), A disaggregate bundle method for train timetabling problems, Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management.

  Paper

  Preprint

Working papers

• Ait-Ali, A. (2024). Exploring measures to monitor passenger-centric punctuality in public transport: a pre study. K2 Working Papers Series 2024:9.

  Paper

• Ait-Ali, A., Lidén, T. (2021). Minimal utilization rates for railway maintenance windows: a cost-benefit approach. VTI Working Papers Series 2021:8. Presented at 2021 European Conference of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis, SCBA 2021, Stockholm.

  Paper

  Slides

• Ait-Ali, A., Eliasson, J., Warg, J. (2020). Are commuter train timetables consistent with passengers’ valuations of waiting times and in-vehicle crowding?. VTI Working Papers Series 2020:1. Presented at 2019 European Conference of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis, SCBA 2019, Toulouse.

  Paper

  Slides

• Ait-Ali, A., Eliasson, J. (2019). Railway capacity allocation: a survey of market organizations, allocation processes and track access charges. VTI Working Papers Series 2019:1.

  Paper

• Ait-Ali, A., Eliasson, J. (2019). Dynamic Origin-Destination Estimation Using Smart Card Data: An Entropy Maximisation Approach. arXiv:1909.02826. Presented at Rail Norrköping 2019.

  Paper

  Slides

Projects - Ongoing

• Priopunkt (Samhällsekonomisk prioritering av underhållsåtgärder för ökad punktlighet), or Socio-Economic Prioritization of Maintenance Actions for Improved Punctuality (2024-2026). Priopunkt is funded by Trafikverket and aims to develop a socio-economically based valuation of events and disruptions in the railway system.
• RURUT or resource-efficient maintenance and renewal strategies via look-up tables (2024-2027). RURUT is funded by Vinnova (InfaSweden) and aims to study how look-up tables can be used identify and prioritise maintenance and renewal activities based on their economic efficiency, including environmental effects and other external costs.
• ResPunkt (2024-2025) A Pre-study, funded by K2 research center, exploring measures to monitor passenger-centric punctuality in public transport.

Projects - Completed

• VTT (2022-2024) Research project, funded by Trafikverket, about value of traffic information to passengers during train traffic disruptions, a socio-economic study.

  Final report (in Swedish)

• Mistra InfraMaint (2022-2023) Models for more effective strategies for maintenance of switches & crossings and for rail grinding.
• IMPACT-2 (2021-2022) Work package WP4 on quantitative KPI-Tree and SPD integrated assessment, funded by the EU as part of Shift2Rail.
• FR8RAIL III (2020-2021) Work package WP2 on Real-Time Network Management), funded by the EU as part of Shift2Rail.
• SamEff doctoral project (Samhällsekonomiskt Effektiv fördelning av järnvägskapacitet, 2015-2020) or Socio-economically efficient railway capacity allocation, funded by Trafikverket.

Presentations

• Estimering av dynamiska origin-destination matriser baserat på entropimaximering. Transportforum 2021.

  Slides

• Samhällsekonomisk analys av pendeltågens frekvensk: operatörens värdering av väntetid och trängsel. Transportforum 2020.

  Slides

Teaching

• Optimization and Statistics in Transportation The course provides basic insight in optimization, especially optimization of linear, nonlinear and integer problems with applications in transportation.
• Public transportation and rail traffic The course provides basic knowledge of public transport systems and rail transport. The focus is on tactical planning of public transport.

Supervision

• Passengers’ Punctuality in Railways: A comparison of passenger-centric measures of punctuality in rail networks Passenger - Master thesis.
• Public transport usage analysis based on ticket data - Master thesis.

Other publications

• Ait-Ali, A., Peterson, A. (2024). Värdering av trafikinformationsnyttor i tågtrafiken (VTT): slutrapport. VTI-rapport.

  Rapport (in Swedish)

• Ait-Ali, A. (2020). Methods for Capacity Allocation in Deregulated Railway Markets. Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Dissertation No. 2101.

  Kappa

  Thesis

  Slides

  Video

• Warg, J., Ait-Ali, A., Eliasson, J. (2019). Assessment of Commuter Train Timetables Including Transfers. Presented at the 21th EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting, EWGT 2018, Braunschweig.

  Paper

  Slides

• Sedrati, A., Ait-Ali, A. (2019). Moroccan Darija in Online Creation Communities: Example of Wikipedia. Al-Andalus Magreb, 26, 11.1-14.

  Paper

  Slides

• Ait-Ali, A., Eliasson, J., Warg, J. (2017). Measuring the Socio-economic Benefits of Train Timetables Application to Commuter Train Services in Stockholm. Presented at the 20th EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting, EWGT 2017, Budapest.

  Paper

  Slides

• Ait-Ali, A., Sedrati, A. (2016). Towards Internet Domain Names in Tifinagh. Presented at TICAM Conference 2016, Rabat.

  Paper

  Slides

• Ait-Ali, A. (2015). Integration of Production Scheduling and Energy Management: Software Development. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

  Thesis

Media

• Global Railway Review - Q&A with Abdou Ait-Ali, VTI: Improving railway capacity allocation.

  Article

  Video

• LiU News - How to efficiently allocate railway capacity.

  English

  Swedish

Contacts

• Emails: Personal - VTI - LiU
• Google Scholar - ResearchGate
• Linkedin - Github
• Medium - Twitter - Facebook