Re-scheduling in railways: the Rolling Stock Balancing Problem

This paper addresses the Rolling Stock Balancing Problem (RSBP). This problem arises at a passenger railway operator when the rolling stock has to be re-scheduled due to changing circumstances. These problems arise both in the planning process and during operations. The RSBP has as input a timetable and a rolling stock schedule where the allocation of the rolling stock among the stations does not fit to the allocation before and after the planning period. The problem is then to correct these off-balances, leading to a modified schedule that can be implemented in practice. For practical usage of solution approaches for the RSBP, it is important to solve the problem quickly. Therefore, the focus is on heuristic approaches. In this paper, we describe two heuristics and compare them with ∗Econometric Institute, Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, NL-3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: {budai,huisman,rdekker}@few.eur.nl. †Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, NL-3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: {gmaroti,lkroon}@rsm.nl. ‡Erasmus Center for Optimization in Public Transport (ECOPT). §This work was partially supported by the Future and Emerging Technologies Unit of EC (IST priority 6th FP), under contract no. FP6-021235-2 (project ARRIVAL). ¶Corresponding author.