Copyright © 2012 Zhipeng Huang and Huimin Niu. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The passenger transport demands at a given junction station fluctuate obviously in different time periods, which makes the rail departments unable to establish an even train operation schedule. This paper considers an optimization problem for train operations at the junction station in passenger dedicated lines. A satisfaction function of passengers is constructed by means of analyzing the satisfaction characteristics and correlative influencing factors. Through discussing the passengers’ travel choice behavior, we formulate an optimization model based on maximum passenger satisfaction for the junction and then design a heuristic algorithm. Finally, a numerical example is provided to demonstrate the application of the method proposed in this paper.