Research Methodology: Application of Railway Luggage and Package Transportation Scheme Formulation Based on a Dynamic Time–Space Service Network

Abstract

In the current market environment, the formulation of a railway luggage and package transport scheme (RLPTS) is often affected by the specific requirements of the transport organization, the complex composition of the transport service network, and the dynamic changes of transport demands, which make it very difficult. In this paper, a two-stage RLPTS formulation method is proposed that can meet not only transport demands with dynamic changes, but also the requirements of transport timeliness. It is used to solve the problem of current RLPTS formulation. First, a dynamic service network for railway luggage and package transport (RLPT) is constructed based on passenger train schedules, and based on this network, an improved A* algorithm is designed to generate feasible path sets for RLPT demand. Then, based on feasible path sets, a flow distribution model aiming at maximizing the total profit of transportation is established to solve the model in order to enable the flow allocated on the path. Finally, an example calculation shows that the method can implement the RLPTS formulation rapidly.