Abstract for: Understanding Punctuality Dynamics in Railway Systems: A System Dynamics Model of Belgium’s Rail Network

Railway systems are complex socio-technical infrastructure systems where operational, behavioral, and financial processes interact across multiple time scales. In Belgium’s rail network, punctuality remains volatile despite sustained investment in infrastructure and safety. Existing approaches often overlook how short-term control actions, maintenance trade-offs, and capacity constraints jointly shape system-wide delay dynamics. This work applies a System Dynamics approach using reference modes on punctuality, trains operated, cancellations, and passenger demand, followed by causal loop diagramming and an initial stock-flow model. The model represents trip scheduling, trips in progress, completions, and cancellations to explore how operational load, delay, and feedback-driven responses shape disruption and recovery in railway performance. Preliminary simulation reproduces plausible disruption–recovery behavior and suggests that volatility in railway punctuality can emerge from the interaction of system load, cancellations, and delayed responses to rising delays (endogenously). The current model helps identify feedback-driven patterns and compare possible policy directions, but it does not yet provide calibrated historical fit or precise quantitative prediction. This work shows the value of using System Dynamics to study railway punctuality as an outcome of interacting operational and demand-side patterns rather than isolated events. Practically, it can support more balanced scheduling and disruption-management policies. For future research, the model should be calibrated with railway data and extended to represent infrastructure condition, passenger behavior, and longer-term policy trade-offs. Writing and editing support for clarity and brevity