Metro train rescheduling by adding backup trains under disrupted scenarios

Abstract

In large cities with heavily congested metro lines, unexpected disturbances often occur, which may cause severe delay of multiple trains, blockage of partial lines, and reduction of passenger service. Metro dispatchers have taken a practical strategy of rescheduling the timetable and adding several backup trains in storage tracks to alleviate waiting passengers from crowding the platforms and recover from such disruptions. In this study, we first develop a mixed integer programming model to determine the optimal train rescheduling plan with considerations of in-service and backup trains. The aim of train rescheduling is to frequently dispatch trains to evacuate delayed passengers after the disruption. Given the nonlinearity of the model, several linearization techniques are adapted to reformulate the model into an equivalent linear model that can be easily handled by the optimization software. Numerical experiments are implemented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed train rescheduling approach.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

train rescheduling / backup train / metro line / disruption / timetable

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61503020, 61403020, U1434209), the Beijing Laboratory of Urban Rail Transit, the Beijing Key Laboratory of Urban Rail Transit Automation and Control, and the Major Program of Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission under Grant Z161100001016006.

Conflicts of interest The authors declare that there is no conflicts of interest or financial disclosures.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2017 The Author(s) 2017. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)