Integrated Optimization Methods For Train Timetabling And Stop Planning Problems

With the rapid development of railway transportation,the train timetable and stop plan,which are always regarded as the most important parts of railway operation,have attracted extensive attention from railway companies and researchers.However,due to the complexity of the railway system,the train timetable and stop plan are usually studied separately.In practice,the train timetable and stop plan have close connection with each other and influence each other greatly.What’s more,the passenger demand is also the most important basis in the process of designing the train stop plan.Thus,in order to obtain system-optimized railway operation plans,this dissertation particularly investigates the integrated optimization methods for train timetabling and stop planning problems.In addition,for satisfying different requirements,a lot of different mathematical models will be formulated according to different considerations,such as the decision-making level,the types of passenger demand,robustness,etc.Specifically,the contents of this dissertation can be concluded as the following five aspects:(1)Integrated optimization method for train timetabling and stop planning with station based passenger demand.Firstly,from a macroscopic perspective,we analyze the close connections of the decision variables and objective functions between the train timetabling and stop planning models,and establish the connection constraints between the decision variables of these two problems.Then,a multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model is formally formulated for this problem,in which the objective function is to minimize the total dwelling time and total delay between the real and expected departure times from origin station for all trains.Finally,the commercial software GAMS with CPLEX solver is applied to solve the formulated model.And the computational results based on Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway show that the proposed methods can simultaneously generate the system-optimized train timetable and stop plan.(2)Integrated multi-track station layout design and train timetabling models on railway corridors.The dwelling capacity of the station(mainly determined by its multi-track layout)is a practically significant factor to influence the quality of the train timetables.To improve the passing capacity and transportation efficiency,some critical stations are considered to enlarge the number of siding tracks or platforms within the budget constraints.With different considerations,a single-level linear mixed-integer programming(S-LMIP)model based on the space-time network representation method and a bi-level programming model associated with the platform choice-based method are respectively formulated for this problem.The commercial software GAMS with CPLEX solver and local searching based heuristic with integrated CPLEX solver are respectively employed to solve the near-optimal solutions for these two types of models The computational results based on Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway corridor show that the proposed methods can use few cost to improve the dwelling capacity of some stations and reduce the total travel time of all trains(3)Integrated optimization method for train timetabling and stop planning with OD passenger demand.From a microscopic perspective,based on the integrated optimization method for train timetabling and stop planning problems with station based passenger demand,we further consider the passenger demands over each origin and destination(OD)pair and track the number of passengers boarding and alighting at each station.By establishing the connection constraints among the decision variables of train stop plan,timetable and passenger distribution plan,a new integrated optimization model for train timetabling and stop planning problems is formulated with the purpose of minimizing the total travel time of all trains and passengers.In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods,Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway corridor is used to implement the experiments.The computational results show that the proposed methods can simultaneously optimize the train timetable,stop plan and passenger distribution plan,which also can provide some useful information for the distribution of tickets(4)Robust train timetabling and stop planning with uncertain passenger demand Due to the influences of seasons,weathers,holidays and other factors,the passenger demands are usually not deterministic in the real-world operations,which are always changed day by day.In order to improve the ability of the obtained operation plans to deal with the changes of passenger demands,under different considerations,four types of robust optimization model are particularly formulated by using the scenario-based representation method to describe the uncertainty of passenger demands.The first one is the demand-based robust model(DRM)to insert some protections on the passenger demands.The second one is the nominal-plan based robust model(NPRM),which aims to make some limitations on the changes of the existing plans in the process of inserting robustness protection.The third one is the train-capacity based robust model(TCRM)with considering more specific protections on the passenger demands on each train.The last one is the passenger-distribution based robust model(PDRM)with the purpose of tracking the specific distributed robustness protections on each train.And in all of the models,the Light robustness technique is particularly applied.In a similar way,the computational results based on the Wuhan-Guanghou high-speed railway corridor show that the robust solutions obtained by the proposed methds have much better performances than the nominal solution on the changes of passenger demands.(5)Integrated optimization method for train timetabling,stop planning and tickets distribution.Due to the various purposes of passengers traveling,the expected departure times of different passengers are usually different.In order to make sure that the distributed tickets on each train can provide the services as close as to the passengers,requirements,based on the integrated optimization method for train timetabling and stop planning problems with OD passenger demands,the expected departure time of the passengers are particularly considered.By introducing new binary decision variables to indicate whether the passengers can board the train successfully according to the distributed tickets and setting up the connection constraints among them,a new linear mixed integer programming model for integrated optimization method for train timetabling,stop planning and tickets distributing is formulated.To show the effectiveness of the proposed methods,Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway corridor is used to implement the numerical experiments.And the computational results show that the proposed methods can optimize the train timetable,stop plan and tickets distribution simultaneously,and can avoid the unsuitable situation that passengers need to arrive before or wait too much time.