Conference article

Railway operators must schedule resources such as rolling stock and crew in order to operate trains as defined by a timetable. This paper considers scheduling of rolling stock, which is usually done by creating a roster. A roster is a series of trains to be performed by the particular rolling stock. The number of train-sets required to operate a given group of trains is essentially determined by the roster and generation of an efficient roster is essential. Important considerations of the roster generation include maintenance such as pre-departure inspection. On some lines in Japan, splitting and combining are often used to adjust transportation capacity flexibly. Under this type of operation, splitting and combining become necessary. These shunting operations require time and manpower, so it is necessary to reduce the amount of splitting and combining. This paper presents a mixed integer linear programming model so that the amount of splitting and combining is reduced together with the roster length and the distance of empty runs. Results of computational studies will be presented based on real instances of several lines in Japan, indicating the computational effectiveness of the methodology and with respect to the reasonableness of the resultant rosters.

Rolling stock rostering, Splitting and combining, Maintenance, Mixed integer linear programming, Travelling salesman problem