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arXiv · 2409.08256

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

Wanru Chen·Rolf N. van Lieshout·Dezhi Zhang·Tom Van Woensel
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Abstract

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.

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Wanru Chen, Rolf N. van Lieshout, Dezhi Zhang, Tom Van Woensel. 2024-09-12. Multi-period railway line planning for integrated passenger-freight transportation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.08256

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