Train scheduling with short turning strategy for an urban rail transit line with multiple depots

Abstract

With the increasing passenger demand, urban rail transit systems are operated with high frequency train services. Due to the uneven distribution of the passenger flows, only operating full-length train services from the origin station to the destination station is not sufficient, especially for the central business district (CBD) areas during peak hours, where the load factors of train services could reach 100% or even 120%. Meanwhile, only operating full-length train services could result in the lack of rolling stocks because of the long cycling time. The short turning strategy can be adopted to enhance the passengers' satisfaction and reducing their waiting time. In this paper, we proposed a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to obtain train schedules with full-length and short turning train services to satisfy the service frequencies obtained by the passenger demand analysis. The MILP problems can be efficiently solved by existing solvers, e.g. CPLEX. A case study is carried out based on the data of the Beijing Yizhuang line to assess the performance of the train schedule with short turning strategy.