Energy Management and Optimal Operation of Light Rail Trains on Jerusalem's Proposed Green Line
Written by Advance Engineering engineer Maoz Eitan, M.Sc., together with Sebastián de la Torre (Electrical Engineering Department, University of Málaga).
The research was carried out by Maoz Eitan on behalf of Advance Engineering, as part of Advance Engineering's work on the Jerusalem Light Rail Green Line project.
Published in: IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology, vol. 7, pp. 1137–1150, 2026. DOI: 10.1109/OJVT.2026.3676227
About the paper
The paper presents an optimization model for operating urban light rail trains. It combines train traction dynamics, energy exchange between trains, on-board battery storage and real infrastructure constraints in one mathematical model, including the energy recovered through regenerative braking.
The model was applied to the Jerusalem Light Rail Green Line, using detailed topographic data and more than 2,000 track segments over a 32.7 km round trip. Sixteen operating scenarios were compared: minimizing cost or travel time, with or without on-board energy storage, with or without regenerative braking, and at different maximum speeds.
Main results
Minimizing travel time gives only small time savings at a much higher energy cost, while minimizing cost gives a better balance between the two.
The best configuration combines cost minimization, regenerative braking and on-board storage. Braking trains recover energy that is passed to other trains on the line or stored in the on-board battery for later use.
For a full day of operation at 5-minute frequency, daily operating costs are €8,273.52, with €270.14 saved by regenerative braking.
© 2026 The Authors. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license.
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