An efficient hybrid approach for scheduling the train timetable for the longer distance high‐speed railway

Abstract

Compared with other modes of transportation, a high‐speed railway has energy saving advantages; it is environmentally friendly, safe, and convenient for large capacity transportation between cities. With the expansion of the high‐speed railway network, the operation of high‐speed railways needs to be improved urgently. In this paper, a hybrid approach for quickly solving the timetable of high‐speed railways, inspired by the periodic model and the aperiodic model, is pro-posed. A space–time decomposition method is proposed to convert the complex passenger travel demands into service plans and decompose the original problem into several sub‐problems, to re-duce the solving complexity. An integer programming model is proposed for the sub‐problems, and then solved in parallel with CPLEX. After that, a local search algorithm is designed to combine the timetables of different periods, considering the safety operation constraints. The hybrid approach is tested on a real‐world case study, based on the Beijing–Shanghai high‐speed railway (HSR), and the results show that the train timetable calculated by the approach is superior to the real‐world timetable in many indexes. The hybrid approach combines the advantages of the periodic model and the aperiodic model; it can deal with the travel demands of passengers well and the solving speed is fast. It provides the possibility for flexible adjustment of a timetable and timely response to the change of passenger travel demands, to avoid the waste of transportation resources and achieve sustainable development.