This is the third Special Issue related to papers presented at the 11th International Conference on Advanced Systems for Public Transport (CASPT) held in Hong Kong on 20–22 July 2009. First held in Chicago in 1975, the now triennial CASPT conference series serves as a forum for the international community of researchers and practitioners to address all aspects of public transport operations and systems planning. Faced with the challenges of economic globalization and environmental sustainability, the need for effective and low-energy transport is more urgent than ever. The papers in this Special Issue cover significant contributions in advancing both theory and modeling for optimizing public transit operations and systems design. The paper by Caimi, Fuchsberger, Laumanns and Schupbach presents a hierarchical framework for railway timetable design. A schedule on a macroscopic level is first constructed representing desired routes, service frequencies and connections. Next micro-scheduling is done on a regional basis accounting for track allocations