An Algorithm for Connecting Suburban Rail Line to Urban Rail Transit Network

Abstract

A greedy search based heuristic algorithm was proposed to solve the problem of connecting suburban rail line to existing urban mass transit network, aiming to provide efficient trips for passengers from satellite towns within metropolises to urban area. Optimum connection scheme set was sorted out from the perspectives respectively regarding optimization searching process and different transfer coefficients that reveal the predominance of transfer in path length. And at the same time, the searching process can also assure as short rail line and few connection stations be built as possible when adding more connection stations. High quality of connection design schemes can be ensured by these optional designs, which can also cover various connection modes of different station spacing, providing solid basis for evaluation and selection in future stage. Finally, the aforementioned algorithm was implemented in an example, generating an optimized connection scheme set, which proves the applicability of this algorithm in large scale rail network connection problem.