Abstract
In China, cross-track high-speed trains (CTHSTs) play an important role in railway passenger transportation, with an increasing number of cross-track passengers sourced from the expansion of high-speed railway (HSR) network. The CTHST generally has long travel times, so running CTHSTs is not beneficial for train rescheduling work and plan’s periodicity in the periodic operation context. Thus, the main challenge in cross-track line planning is looking for a symmetry point between passenger transportation and disadvantages of running CTHSTs, which are two conflicting aspects. In this study, we developed a multiobjective integer programming model to produce a balanced cross-track line plan by combining individual-track high-speed trains (ITHSTs) into CTHSTs, which is a discrete optimization problem. This strikes a balance among four goals: the periodicity of the line plan, CTHST quantity, CTHST mileage, and CTHST stops in the context of periodic operation, while satisfying the constraints of passenger demand and the number of available ITHSTs. Numerical experiments are conducted based on a real-world network and optimal solutions were quickly obtained. We analyzed impacts of each goal and parameter on the result and influencing factors of computation. Comparisons with existing methods and real-life plans were also presented to show improvements made by proposed model.
Highlights
Since the late 2000s, China’s high-speed railway (HSR) has experienced large growth, and its network has expanded from a single HSR line to multiple HSR lines forming an intersected network.By the end of 2015, China completed the construction of the HSR network, which is mainly formed byFour Vertical and Four Horizontal HSR lines (FVFH-HSR, i.e., four north–south HSR lines and four east–west HSR lines), with a total mileage of 19,000 km
The mileage of the cross-track high-speed trains (CTHSTs) should be CTHSTs, i.e., the number of cross-track lines multiplied by their frequencies in the resulted line plan, minimized for the same reason
As for the indexes, the number of CTHSTs needed was reduced, as expected, with a decrease in travel demand
Summary
Since the late 2000s, China’s high-speed railway (HSR) has experienced large growth, and its network has expanded from a single HSR line to multiple HSR lines forming an intersected network. Due to the large scale of the network, different train stop patterns and the high speed of CTHSTs, situations of cross-track travel and line planning are diverse worldwide. The model proposed in this paper generated a line plan that meets the cross-track passenger demand and comprehensively optimizes the train quantity, stop quantity, running mileage, and periodicity of the line plan, striking a balance between passenger transportation and the negative effects of running CTHSTs. The model formulation is firstly proposed for a simple case where only two tracks are involved and was expanded to general formulation for multiple tracks. Due to the important role that the CTHST plays in China’s HSR system and the lack of an efficient computer method for cross-track line planning in China, a new process to generate a cross-track line plan in periodic context is proposed. The final section presents our conclusions along with a summary of the comments and future research steps
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