Abstract
A B S T R A C T The problem of generating a train schedule for a single - track railway sy s tem i s addressed in this paper. A three stage scheduling is proposed to reduce the total train tardiness. We derived an appropriate job-shop scheduling algorithm called DR-algorithm. In the first stage, by determining appropriate weights of the dispatching rules, a pre-schedule is constructed. In the second stage, on the basis of the pre-schedule, the departure times of the trains are modified to reduce the number of conflicts in using railway sections by different trains. In the third stage, a train speed control helps the scheduler to change the trains' speeds in order to reduce the train tardiness and to reach other objectives. The factual train schedule is based on the modified train speeds and on the modified departure times of the trains. The experimental running of the DR-algorithm on the benchmark instances showed this algorithm can solve train scheduling problems in a close to optimal way. In particular, the total train tardiness was reduced about 20% due to controlling train speeds and the departure times of the trains.
Highlights
Railway traffic has been essentially increased in the last decades
The train speeds and the number of trains moving on a railway system are increasing
We develop a weighted mixed priority dispatching rule scheduler
Summary
Railway traffic has been essentially increased in the last decades (see Lusby et al, 2011 for a survey). Szpigel (1973) was the first who identified the similarities between a job-shop scheduling problem and a train scheduling problem in the case of a single-track railway The former was solved by Szpigel (1973) using a B&B algorithm, the initial linear programming excluding order constraints. Ghoseiri et al (2004) developed a multi-objective optimization model for the train scheduling problem They considered both single and multiple track railway systems. Their objective is defined as lowering the fuel consumption cost and minimizing total passenger time They solved the problem by a Pareto algorithm, they tried to use a multi-objective optimization to tune the results. There is a limitation in their algorithm because they assumed that all trains moved in the same direction must have the same speed and terminating siding
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