Integrated modeling of high performance passenger and freight train planning on shared-use corridors in the US

• Studies strategic train operation planning on shared use rail corridors in the US.
• A hypergraph based, two-level modeling approach is developed.
• We consider passenger schedule delay and freight foregone demand.
• A linearized formulation takes advantage of the special structure of the problem.
• We apply the model to a sample problem and a real-world case in the US.

This paper studies strategic level train planning for high performance passenger and freight train operations on shared-use corridors in the US. We develop a hypergraph-based, two-level approach to sequentially minimize passenger and freight costs while scheduling train services. Passenger schedule delay and freight lost demand are explicitly modeled. We explore different solution strategies and conclude that a problem-tailored linearized reformulation yields superior computational performance. Using realistic parameter values, our numerical experiments show that passenger cost due to schedule delay is comparable to in-vehicle travel time cost and rail fare. In most cases, marginal freight cost increase from scheduling more passenger trains is higher than marginal reduction in passenger schedule delay cost. The heterogeneity of train speed reduces the number of freight trains that can run on a corridor. Greater tolerance for delays could reduce lost demand and overall cost on the freight side. The approach developed in the paper could be applied to other scenarios with different parameter values.