Multi-route railroad blocking problem by improved model and ant colony algorithm in real world

In rail freight transportation, general merchandise freight cars may pass through many classification stations on their route from origin to destination. The Railroad Blocking Problem (RBP) is to reclassify inbound traffic from various origins in the classification stations and put them on outbound...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers & industrial engineering 2011-02, Vol.60 (1), p.34-42
Main Authors: Yue, Yixiang, Zhou, Leishan, Yue, Qunxing, Fan, Zhenping
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Ant colony algorithm
Cost reduction
Freight
Mathematical models
Networks
Optimization
Optimization algorithms
Railroad blocking problem
Railroad transportation
Railroads
Railway engineering
Railway networks
Routes
Stations
Studies
Traffic engineering
Traffic flow
Train blocking plan
Transportation planning
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Summary:In rail freight transportation, general merchandise freight cars may pass through many classification stations on their route from origin to destination. The Railroad Blocking Problem (RBP) is to reclassify inbound traffic from various origins in the classification stations and put them on outbound trains with the same or close destinations, the objective of the RBP is to minimize the total operating costs of delivering all traffic on the railway network while satisfying the resource and capacity constraints at the stations and the priority constraints for shipments. In this paper, we introduce a new mathematic model which can comprehensively describe the blocking strategy and various combinations of multi-route O–D pairs in large scale railway network. Furthermore, we propose an improved Ant Colony (AC) algorithm for RPB, and a computational experiment derived from the real life instances of coal heavy haul rail network in north China is given. Experimental results verified the validation of the model and effectiveness of the algorithm.
ISSN:0360-8352
1879-0550
DOI:10.1016/j.cie.2010.09.014