Title: Research on freight business reorganisation for railway freight station hub in China

Authors: Yong Liu; Xiaoning Zhu; Xi Chen; Liujiang Kang

Addresses: School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, 100044, China; Shenzhen Urban Transport, Planning Center, 518021, China ' School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, 100044, China ' School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, 100044, China ' School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, 100044, China

Abstract: Freight business reorganisation (FBR) in railway freight station hub is researched on the basis of the idea of 'limited categories and limited directions'. First, according to the subordinate hierarchical decision-making relationship between railway departments and shippers, a bi-level programming model for FBR is constructed. The objective of upper level model is to minimise the total of freight turnover in the freight station hub and the dispersion of business, and minimising the transport cost for shippers is the goal of the lower level model. Then, reaction function between upper and lower decision variables is formatted and a heuristic algorithm to solve the model is developed. Finally, a numerical sample is designed to verify the feasibility of the model and the algorithm. The results show that the business dispersion in reorganised freight station decreased by 75.00%, freight turnover decreased by 18.21%, and the shippers' transport costs only increased by 9.40%.

Keywords: freight station hubs; freight business reorganisation; FBR; bi-level programming; heuristics; railway transport; China; rail freight; freight turnover; transport costs; freight transport.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2016.079821

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2016 Vol.24 No.3, pp.275 - 301

Received: 23 Jul 2014
Accepted: 11 Jan 2015
Published online: 17 Oct 2016 *

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