Why China must build Sichuan-Tibet railway: From the perspective of regional comprehensive transportation network optimization

Abstract

We not only firstly applied the theory of hub-and-spoke network to the field of integrated transportation network planning, but also combined our proposed method with Sichuan-Tibet railway, one of super large projects in China, to discuss the optimization and the layout of hub-and-spoke integrated transportation network along the Sichuan-Tibet railway after it is put into operation in the future and put forward some directional policy recommendations. In our study, we have made clear the topological structure of the multi hub and single allocation hybrid hub-and-spoke integrated transportation network in the passenger transportation corridors, established the integer programming model aiming at the minimum generalized travel cost in the network, and we designed the simulated annealing algorithm to solve this problem. In the empirical study, we find that if 5 nodes are selected as hub nodes in hub-and-spoke integrated transportation network, the generalized cost of network travel will be minimized and these specific location of 5 hub nodes can be determined by the selecting principle of hub nodes location, which we proposed in our study. The simulated annealing algorithm can help us to find the connection relationship between nodes. Then we can achieve three types of hub-and-spoke integrated transportation network layout patterns with railway, highway and aviation as the hub nodes. Though further comparative analysis, we find that it is more feasible to choose the integrated transportation network with railway nodes as the hub in transportation organization. Based on this understanding, we put forward policy recommendations on transportation organization to support high-quality planning and operation of integrated transportation network to Sichuan Tibet region in China in the future.