Ship Congestion at a Scheduled Draw Bridge

The railway bridge at Dordrecht (Holland) can be raised to let big ships pass through. This takes place according to a fixed daily time schedule derived from the railway timetable. The waiting times of the ships depend on the number and the duration of these openings, the headway of the unraised bridge (changing on account of tidal effects), and the traffic supply. In this paper the dependence of the waiting times on the above-mentioned factors is quantified by means of a Monte Carlo simulation procedure.