Microscopic resource assignment model and Lagrangian relaxation based algorithm for train operation scheduling in railway station

Abstract

The quality of train operation plan in large railway stations is “critical” for the efficiency of the whole railway network. We present a novel optimization approach for operation scheduling problem in railway station. The model is based on microscopic devices of railway infrastructure, such as tracks, switches and crosses. The scheduling decisions are based on discretized resource-time network; we introduce Lagrangian relaxation based heuristic method to compute the maximum total profit of operation plan without any operation conflicts. The approach has been tested on a real world high speed railway case with one hour realistic data. The results investigate the quality of the proposed model and algorithm.