EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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3306. Two-stage approach for rail freight terminal scheduling with mainline passenger traffic interaction

Invited abstract in session TA-55: ML & OR Applications in Transport Modelling, stream Transportation.

Tuesday, 8:30-10:00
Room: S02 (building: 101)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Daniel Haalboom
Chair of Railway Operations, TUD Dresden University of Technology
2. Nikola Bešinović
Chair of Railway Operations, Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, Technical University of Dresden

Abstract

In the European rail network, infrastructural limitations of terminals pose critical bottlenecks for the scheduling of rail freight services. In addition, passenger traffic on mainlines leading up to the terminals puts additional constraints on efficient rail freight scheduling possibilities. Thus, integrating terminal activities and mainline operations in a rail freight scheduling approach could significantly improve infrastructure usage. However, interactions between freight and passenger traffic in freight terminal scheduling have received little attention in scientific literature so far.
We propose a two-stage approach to schedule rail freight services in a freight network with interacting mainline passenger services. The focus is on short-term scheduling, and thus freight trains are considered and included in the schedule as requests arrive. In the first stage, we use a dynamic infrastructure cost structure to schedule successive trains. In the second stage, we apply the initial solution from the first stage for a subsequent global optimization of the requested freight train services.
The applied two-stage optimisation approach minimises the deviation from requested train paths and allows determination of critical infrastructure elements for each included subset of trains. This model improves the quality of freight train scheduling and offers a better inclusion of yards leading up to the terminals into the train scheduling.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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