EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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3198. Integrated railway train unit and crew scheduling using column pre-generation

Invited abstract in session MB-54: Crew Planning in Public Transport, stream Public Transport Optimization.

Monday, 10:30-12:00
Room: S01 (building: 101)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Chuhan Yin
Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds
2. Zhiyuan Lin
Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds
3. David Watling
Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds

Abstract

In passenger rail operations, train unit and crew scheduling are key processes. Train unit scheduling assigns rolling stock, while crew scheduling allocates personnel like drivers. Both tasks, critical for optimizing vehicle and crew use to save costs, are complex NP-hard problems traditionally solved separately as two stages. This sequential approach limits achieving truly optimal schedules. An integrated approach, considering both simultaneously, promises more optimized solutions and has been successful in bus operations, reducing operational costs and crew usage, but is under-researched in rail planning.
In this study, we introduce an integrated approach for scheduling train units and crews by utilizing pre-generated shifts (duties). This approach faces unique obstacles in the rail sector, particularly when employing the pre-generation strategy. A key challenge involves allocating staff to auxiliary tasks like shunting and unit coupling/decoupling, which are determined during the integrated process but unknown in advance. Another challenge is the need to pre-generate deadheading trips and incorporate them into pre-generated shifts. This challenge does not exist during the separate procedure. In theory, there is a huge number of deadheading trips, leading to a severe increase on the number of pre-generated shifts. We explore solutions to these issues through both synthetic and real-world examples, demonstrating our approach's effectiveness in solving these challenges.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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