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Service network design for freight railway transportation: the Italian case

Author

Listed:
  • G Lulli

    (Università di Milano ‘Bicocca’)

  • U Pietropaoli

    (Università di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’)

  • N Ricciardi

    (Sapienza Università di Roma)

Abstract

In this paper, we present a case study on freight railway transportation in Italy, which is a by-product of research collaboration with a major Italian railway company. We highlight the main features of the Italian reality and propose a customized mathematical model to design the service network, that is, the set of origin-destination connections. More specifically, the model suggests the services to provide, the number of trains travelling on each connection, the number of cars and their type. We consider both full and empty freight car movements and take handling costs into account. All decisions are taken in order to minimize the total costs. The quality of service is guaranteed by satisfying all the transportation demand and by implicitly minimizing the waiting time of cars at intermediate railway stations. Our approach yields to a multi-commodity network design problem with a concave cost function. To solve this problem, we implement a specialized tabu search procedure. Computational results on realistic instances show a significant improvement over current practice.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:62:y:2011:i:12:d:10.1057_jors.2010.190
    DOI: 10.1057/jors.2010.190
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    Cited by:

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    3. Zhimei Wang & Avishai Ceder, 2017. "Efficient design of freight train operation with double-hump yards," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 68(12), pages 1600-1619, December.
    4. 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.
    5. Li, Dongjun & Islam, Dewan Md Zahurul & Robinson, Mark & Song, Dong-Ping & Dong, Jing-Xin & Reimann, Marc, 2024. "Network revenue management game in the railway industry: Stackelberg equilibrium, global optimality, and mechanism design," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 312(1), pages 240-254.
    6. 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.
    7. Meng, Lingyun & Zhou, Xuesong, 2019. "An integrated train service plan optimization model with variable demand: A team-based scheduling approach with dual cost information in a layered network," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 1-28.
    8. Ahmad Baubaid & Natashia Boland & Martin Savelsbergh, 2021. "The Value of Limited Flexibility in Service Network Designs," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(1), pages 52-74, 1-2.

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