Multi-period railway line planning for integrated passenger-freight transportation

This paper addresses a multi-period line planning problem in an integrated passenger-freight railway system, aiming to maximize profit while serving passengers and freight using a combination of dedicated passenger trains, dedicated freight trains, and mixed trains. To accommodate demand with differ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2024-09
Main Authors: Chen, Wanru, van Lieshout, Rolf N, Zhang, Dezhi, Tom Van Woensel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceleration
Computing time
Diving
Freight railways
Freight trains
Freight transportation
Heuristic
Heuristic methods
High speed rail
Integer programming
Mixed integer
Passenger trains
Passengers
Railway networks
Tracks (paths)
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Summary:This paper addresses a multi-period line planning problem in an integrated passenger-freight railway system, aiming to maximize profit while serving passengers and freight using a combination of dedicated passenger trains, dedicated freight trains, and mixed trains. To accommodate demand with different time sensitivities, we develop a period-extended change&go-network that tracks the paths taken by passengers and freight. The problem is formulated as a path-based mixed integer programming model, with the linear relaxation solved using column generation. Paths for passengers and freight are dynamically generated by solving pricing problems defined as elementary shortest-path problems with duration constraints. We propose two heuristic approaches: price-and-branch and a diving heuristic, with acceleration strategies, to find integer feasible solutions efficiently. Computational experiments on the Chinese high-speed railway network demonstrate that the diving heuristic outperforms the price-and-branch heuristic in both computational time and solution quality. Additionally, the experiments highlight the benefits of integrating freight, the advantages of multi-period line planning, and the impact of different demand patterns on line operations.
ISSN:2331-8422