Joint optimization model for train scheduling and train stop planning with passengers distribution on railway corridors

Aiming to provide a more practical modeling framework for railway optimization problem, this paper investigates the joint optimization model for train scheduling, train stop planning and passengers distributing by considering the passenger demands over each origin and destination (OD) pair on a high-speed railway corridor. Specifically, through introducing new decision variables associated with the number of passengers distributed in each train over each OD pair and formulating the connection constraints between the train stop plan and passenger distributions, the total travel time of all the trains is firstly adopted as the objective function to optimize the train stop plan and timetable with the passenger demands being guaranteed. Then, based on the generated train stop plan and timetable, the passenger distribution plan is further optimized with the purpose of minimizing the total travel time of all the passengers. Finally, the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approaches are verified by the obtained train stop plans, timetables and passenger distribution plans for a sample railway corridor and Wuhan–Guangzhou high-speed railway corridor. The computational results showed that the proposed methods can effectively obtain the train stop plan, timetable and passenger distribution plan at the same time.