IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ortrsc/v42y2008i4p450-465.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimizing the Cargo Express Service of Swiss Federal Railways

Author

Listed:
  • Alberto Ceselli

    (Dipartimento di Tecnologie dell'Informazione, Università degli Studi di Milano, 26013 Crema, Italy)

  • Michael Gatto

    (Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland)

  • Marco E. Lübbecke

    (Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Mathematik, 10623 Berlin, Germany)

  • Marc Nunkesser

    (Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland)

  • Heiko Schilling

    (Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Mathematik, 10623 Berlin, Germany)

Abstract

The Cargo Express service of Swiss Federal Railways (SBB Cargo) offers fast overnight transportation of goods between selected train stations in Switzerland and is operated as a hub-and-spoke system with two hubs. We present three different models for planning the operation of this service as a whole. All models capture the underlying optimization problem with a high level of detail: Traffic routing, train routing, makeup, scheduling, and locomotive assignment are all addressed. At the same time we respect hard constraints like tight service time windows and train capacities, and we avoid hub overloading. We describe our approaches for obtaining provably good quality solutions. Our algorithmic techniques involve branch-and-cut, branch-and-price, and problem-specific exact and heuristic acceleration methods. We conclude our study with computational results on realistic data.

Suggested Citation

  • Alberto Ceselli & Michael Gatto & Marco E. Lübbecke & Marc Nunkesser & Heiko Schilling, 2008. "Optimizing the Cargo Express Service of Swiss Federal Railways," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(4), pages 450-465, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:42:y:2008:i:4:p:450-465
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.1080.0246
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.1080.0246
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/trsc.1080.0246?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Teodor Crainic & Jacques-A. Ferland & Jean-Marc Rousseau, 1984. "A Tactical Planning Model for Rail Freight Transportation," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(2), pages 165-184, May.
    2. Crainic, Teodor Gabriel & Laporte, Gilbert, 1997. "Planning models for freight transportation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 97(3), pages 409-438, March.
    3. David Pisinger, 1997. "A Minimal Algorithm for the 0-1 Knapsack Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 45(5), pages 758-767, October.
    4. Mark H. Keaton, 1992. "Designing Railroad Operating Plans: A Dual Adjustment Method for Implementing Lagrangian Relaxation," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 263-279, November.
    5. Emilie Danna & Claude Pape, 2005. "Branch-and-Price Heuristics: A Case Study on the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows," Springer Books, in: Guy Desaulniers & Jacques Desrosiers & Marius M. Solomon (ed.), Column Generation, chapter 0, pages 99-129, Springer.
    6. Ravindra K. Ahuja & Krishna C. Jha & Jian Liu, 2007. "Solving Real-Life Railroad Blocking Problems," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 37(5), pages 404-419, October.
    7. G. Clarke & J. W. Wright, 1964. "Scheduling of Vehicles from a Central Depot to a Number of Delivery Points," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 12(4), pages 568-581, August.
    8. Michael Francis Gorman, 1998. "An application of genetic and tabu searches to the freight railroad operating plan problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 78(0), pages 51-69, January.
    9. Stefan Irnich & Guy Desaulniers, 2005. "Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints," Springer Books, in: Guy Desaulniers & Jacques Desrosiers & Marius M. Solomon (ed.), Column Generation, chapter 0, pages 33-65, Springer.
    10. Jean-François Cordeau & Paolo Toth & Daniele Vigo, 1998. "A Survey of Optimization Models for Train Routing and Scheduling," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(4), pages 380-404, November.
    11. Gilbert Laporte & Yves Nobert & Martin Desrochers, 1985. "Optimal Routing under Capacity and Distance Restrictions," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(5), pages 1050-1073, October.
    12. Kwon, Oh Kyoung & Martland, Carl D. & Sussman, Joseph M., 1998. "Routing and scheduling temporal and heterogeneous freight car traffic on rail networks," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 101-115, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yiting Xing & Ling Li & Zhuming Bi & Marzena Wilamowska‐Korsak & Li Zhang, 2013. "Operations Research (OR) in Service Industries: A Comprehensive Review," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 300-353, May.
    2. Alberto Caprara & Enrico Malaguti & Paolo Toth, 2011. "A Freight Service Design Problem for a Railway Corridor," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(2), pages 147-162, May.
    3. Bi, Mingkai & He, Shiwei & Xu, Wangtu (Ato), 2019. "Express delivery with high-speed railway: Definitely feasible or just a publicity stunt," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 165-187.
    4. I. Ece Içyüz & Jean-Philippe P. Richard & Erdem Eskigun & Dharma Acharya, 2016. "A Two-Model Solution Approach for the Monthly Coal Train Reservations Planning Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 926-946, August.
    5. Sarah Frisch & Philipp Hungerländer & Anna Jellen & Manuel Lackenbucher & Bernhard Primas & Sebastian Steininger, 2023. "Integrated freight car routing and train scheduling," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 31(2), pages 417-443, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chen, Chongshuang & Dollevoet, Twan & Zhao, Jun, 2018. "One-block train formation in large-scale railway networks: An exact model and a tree-based decomposition algorithm," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 1-30.
    2. Chen, C. & Dollevoet, T.A.B. & Zhao, J., 2017. "One-block train formation in large-scale railway networks: An exact model and a tree-based decomposition algorithm," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI-2017-32, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    3. Jin, Jian Gang & Zhao, Jun & Lee, Der-Horng, 2013. "A column generation based approach for the Train Network Design Optimization problem," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-17.
    4. Crainic, Teodor Gabriel, 2000. "Service network design in freight transportation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 272-288, April.
    5. Xin Wang & Teodor Gabriel Crainic & Stein W. Wallace, 2019. "Stochastic Network Design for Planning Scheduled Transportation Services: The Value of Deterministic Solutions," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 31(1), pages 153-170, February.
    6. Xiao, Jie & Pachl, Joern & Lin, Boliang & Wang, Jiaxi, 2018. "Solving the block-to-train assignment problem using the heuristic approach based on the genetic algorithm and tabu search," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 148-171.
    7. G Lulli & U Pietropaoli & N Ricciardi, 2011. "Service network design for freight railway transportation: the Italian case," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 62(12), pages 2107-2119, December.
    8. Endong Zhu & Teodor Gabriel Crainic & Michel Gendreau, 2014. "Scheduled Service Network Design for Freight Rail Transportation," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 62(2), pages 383-400, April.
    9. Lawley, Mark & Parmeshwaran, Vijay & Richard, Jean-Philippe & Turkcan, Ayten & Dalal, Malay & Ramcharan, David, 2008. "A time-space scheduling model for optimizing recurring bulk railcar deliveries," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 42(5), pages 438-454, June.
    10. Khaled, Abdullah A. & Jin, Mingzhou & Clarke, David B. & Hoque, Mohammad A., 2015. "Train design and routing optimization for evaluating criticality of freight railroad infrastructures," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 71-84.
    11. Ruf, Moritz & Cordeau, Jean-François, 2021. "Adaptive large neighborhood search for integrated planning in railroad classification yards," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 26-51.
    12. Boliang Lin & Jingsong Duan & Jiaxi Wang & Min Sun & Wengao Peng & Chang Liu & Jie Xiao & Siqi Liu & Jianping Wu, 2018. "A study of the car-to-train assignment problem for rail express cargos in the scheduled and unscheduled train services network," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(10), pages 1-18, October.
    13. Alena Otto & Erwin Pesch, 2019. "The train-to-yard assignment problem," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 41(2), pages 549-580, June.
    14. J Liu & R K Ahuja & G Şahin, 2008. "Optimal network configuration and capacity expansion of railroads," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(7), pages 911-920, July.
    15. Dall'Orto, Leonardo Campo & Crainic, Teodor Gabriel & Leal, Jose Eugenio & Powell, Warren B., 2006. "The single-node dynamic service scheduling and dispatching problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 170(1), pages 1-23, April.
    16. Arnt-Gunnar Lium & Teodor Gabriel Crainic & Stein W. Wallace, 2009. "A Study of Demand Stochasticity in Service Network Design," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 144-157, May.
    17. Alena Otto & Erwin Pesch, 2017. "Operation of shunting yards: train-to-yard assignment problem," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(4), pages 465-486, May.
    18. Sarah Frisch & Philipp Hungerländer & Anna Jellen & Manuel Lackenbucher & Bernhard Primas & Sebastian Steininger, 2023. "Integrated freight car routing and train scheduling," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 31(2), pages 417-443, June.
    19. Crainic, Teodor Gabriel & Laporte, Gilbert, 1997. "Planning models for freight transportation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 97(3), pages 409-438, March.
    20. Boliang Lin & Xingkui Li & Zexi Zhang & Yinan Zhao, 2019. "Optimizing Transport Scheme of High Value-Added Shipments in Regions without Express Train Services," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-21, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:42:y:2008:i:4:p:450-465. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.