Railway crew capacity planning problem with connectivity considerations in pairings

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1478827 (Table of Contents)

Crew is one of the most crucial resources in railway planning that needs to be considered at strategic, tactical and operational planning levels. During the last decade, crew-related costs outweigh energy expenditures and constitute more than one third of general expenditures in most railways. Therefore, sufficient but effective crew management is a critical planning problem which may lead to important savings. In this study, we deal with the tactical crew capacity planning problem which determines the minimum required number of crew members. In our setting, the feasibility of crew schedules and the connectivity of rosters are integrated to find a repeatable set of schedules that satisfy the operational rules and regulations. We develop a set-covering type formulation and propose a simultaneous column-and-row generation algorithm. We also propose a network representation of the problem and develop a corresponding network flow formulation. In order to compare efficiency and effectiveness of the two solution methods, we perform a comprehensive computational study with data sets acquired from Turkish State Railways and present the results.