Profit-Oriented Railway Passenger Transportation Scheduling: An Integration Model of Line Planning and Ticket Allocation

The profit of railway passenger transportation management (RPTM) is determined by (1) the cost, which is mainly related to the supply schedules (e.g., line plan, timetable, and crew schedule), and (2) the income of ticket sales in the reservation horizon, at the beginning of which a ticket allocation plan is to be made based on a timetable. Generally, the supply schedules and the ticket allocation plan are made separately. This may lead to the loss of global optimality in terms of maximizing the profit of RPTM, since a supply schedule with higher cost may yield more profit. This paper fills this gap by proposing an integer linear programming model, integrating the line plan model, and ticket allocation model. A real-world case is conducted to prove the efficiency of the integrated model, bringing a 25.4% increase in profit over separate models.