Abstract
Passenger demand for railway transportation rapidly increases in peak periods, and the transport capacity for existing trains is not sufficient. Railway companies usually adopt the strategy of adding additional trains in peak periods to meet the higher passenger demand. Designing a good operational plan for additional trains becomes a challenge for operators, though. A new optimization approach for designing an operational plan for additional trains is proposed in this paper. The number of trains, the operational plan, the stop plan, and the timetable for each train can be considered simultaneously in the new optimization approach, which will make it easier to design an operational plan for additional trains. A multi-objective nonlinear model with three objectives of minimizing total running distance, dwelling time, and unsatisfied passengers is proposed. Big-M is introduced to transform the nonlinear model into a linear model. The solver CPLEX is used to solve the transformed linear model and obtain the optimal operational plan. Small-scale numerical experiments are implemented to show the effectiveness of the optimization approach. The large-scale case of the Beijing‒Shanghai railway corridor is studied to demonstrate that the optimization approach can be applied to real-word and large-scale situations.
Highlights
The problem of designing an operational plan for additional trains to meet the passenger demand in peak periods is studied in this paper
We present an optimization approach for designing the operational plan for additional trains, which saved time
A small-scale experiment is conducted to demonstrate that the approach can be used to obtain a good operational plan for additional trains
Summary
Railways have become a more and more important mode of transportation in China because of advantages like safety, green potential, convenience, etc. Railway companies usually adopt the strategy of adding additional trains to deal with the shortage of transport capacity in peak periods and meet passenger demand. These trains added in peak periods are called additional trains; the trains in off-peak periods are called existing trains. The numbers of trains, operational zones, stop plans, timetables, and the passenger demand for additional trains are jointly optimized in this paper. The purpose of this paper is to design an operational plan, including the number of trains, operational zones, stop plans, timetables, and passenger demand, for additional trains in peak periods. Passenger distribution for existing trains is reoptimized to make full use of the capacity of existing trains, which is not fully utilized in the off-peak period
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