Improving service qualities of cyclic line plans considering heterogeneous passenger origin-destination (OD) flow groups

ABSTRACT Cyclic train services provide huge conveniences to passengers. This work aims to fix one vital promise in major line planning studies that passengers were homogeneous. In fact, passengers’ rail travel expectations are heterogeneous. But those heterogeneities show common needs correlating with travel distances and defined station levels. Therefore, we cluster passenger heterogeneities into divided OD groups, extend service qualities, and add more train line factors to our line planning model. Cyclic line plan from this joint optimisation not only receives service quality improvements but also provides multiple train service types to match clustered OD groups. Moreover, we allow passengers to be served by different train service types, deliver a high level of direct services, and maintain the minimum operation cost. We compare concluded line plans with the results of the generic line planning model and the real-world line plan to show our solution advantages.