A Scheduling Approach for the Train-Set Circulation Plan and Timetable for the Longer Distance High-Speed Railway in Transition Time

Abstract

Nowadays, high-speed railway (HSR) has become one of the main choices for passengers. As the number of passengers increases, their travel demands become diverse and the fluctuation range of passenger travel demands will also increase. In order to adapt to the change of passenger travel demands, the switching frequency of timetables needs to be increased. When switching the timetable, the train-set circulation plan also needs to be considered. In this paper, a scheduling approach for quickly solving the timetable and the train-set circulation plan in the transition time is proposed. A section sequence is constructed in the integer programming model, and the primary train-set circulation plan is obtained. Then a stop plan is obtained on the basis of passenger travel demands. To obtain the final train-set circulation plan and the timetable, a genetic algorithm (GA) is designed, and a method that can ensure that the timetable meets the safety operation requirements is proposed. The scheduling approach is tested on the Beijing-Shanghai HSR. The results show that by extending the transition time, the scheduling approach can switch the train-set position from the old state to new state, without additional consumption of resources, on the premise of meeting the travel demands of passengers.