Allocating Freight Empty Cars in Railway Networks with Dynamic Demands

Abstract EN

This paper investigates the freight empty cars allocation problem in railway networks with dynamic demands, in which the storage cost, unit transportation cost, and demand in each stage are taken into consideration.

Under the constraints of capacity and demand, a stage-based optimization model for allocating freight empty cars in railway networks is formulated.

The objective of this model is to minimize the total cost incurred by transferring and storing empty cars in different stages.

Moreover, a genetic algorithm is designed to obtain the optimal empty cars distribution strategies in railway networks.

Finally, numerical experiments are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm.