Railway crew scheduling with semi-flexible timetables

Christian Rählmann () and Ulrich W. Thonemann
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Christian Rählmann: University of Cologne
Ulrich W. Thonemann: University of Cologne

OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, 2020, vol. 42, issue 4, No 1, 835-862

Abstract: Abstract We investigate the impact of coordinating the timetable and the crew schedule in an operational freight railway system. Usually, those problems are solved sequentially—resulting in suboptimal schedules for train drivers due to large idle times between two train rides. We seek to coordinate the timetable and the crew schedule on the operational level by adding flexibility to the timetable. We introduce small time windows that allow to shift entire trains forwards and backwards by discrete time periods. We present a mathematical model and solve it with a column generation heuristic. We test our model on three real datasets of a major European Freight Railway Operator and show that significant reduction in idle time and cost can be achieved.

Keywords: Scheduling; Railway crew scheduling; Timetable; Transportation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s00291-020-00592-y

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