Freight Train Routing

Abstract

This chapter is about strategic routing of freight trains in railway transportation networks with mixed traffic. A good utilization of a railway transportation network is important since in contrast to road and air traffic the routing through railway networks is more challenging and the extensions of capacity are expensive and long-term projects. Therefore, an optimized routing of freight trains have a great potential to exploit remaining capacity since the routing has fewer restrictions compared to passenger trains. In this chapter we describe the freight train routing problem in full detail and present a mixed-integer formulation. Wo focus on a strategic level that take into account the actual immutable passenger traffic. We conclude the chapter with a case study for the German railway network.