Optimal reassignment of passengers to trains following a broken train

Abstract

Train rescheduling is an important task in railway operations to ensure a high punctuality and reliability and thereby also high service level for passengers. In a railway system with ticket booking mechanism, the train dispatching task is quite different and more challenging compared with a system without ticket booking mechanism. In particular when there are severe disruptions where multiple trains are cancelled. This paper focuses on the problem of train rescheduling under disruptions, while simultaneously considering passenger reassignments. A mixed-integer linear programming model is developed to maximize the number of transported passengers who are influenced by the impacted train and to minimize total delays at the same time. A“big-M” method is also used to represent complex “if-then” mapping constraints between passenger reassignment and train stopping constraints. A set of numerical experiments is presented based on a railway network to demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the model.