EMU Route Plan Optimization by Integrating Trains from Different Periods

Abstract

In recent years, the government of China has paid increasing attention to environmental protection issues and has frequently emphasized the importance of ecological civilization. The high-speed railway transportation mode has outstanding advantages in terms of land utilization, energy conservation and environmental protection. China’s high-speed railway networking features are increasingly prominent and are constructed based on the rapid passenger transport network. Additionally, they save resources and are environmentally friendly while meeting safety, punctuality and profitability standards. Electric multiple unit (EMU) routing plan optimization is an important issue for improving operational EMU efficiency and reducing operational costs. At present, the Chinese EMU routing plans for holidays and weekdays are prepared separately because the holiday train timetable requires more EMUs and maintenance tasks. Different integrative optimization measures are considered, and a model is constructed to integrate an optimized weekday and holiday EMU routing plan problem and minimize the EMUs used and EMU maintenance tasks. The proposed model is based on the branch-and-price algorithm, and a real-world case study is conducted. The real-world numerical experiment shows that the amount of EMU maintenance can be reduced to some extent through the integrated optimization of tasks, but it is difficult to reduce the number of EMUs due to the structure of the train operational timetable.