Real-time scheduling for single lines in urban rail transit systems

The real-time scheduling problem for urban rail transit systems is considered with the aim of minimizing the total passenger travel time, i.e. the sum of passenger waiting time at stations and passenger on-board time. The operation of trains and passenger demand characteristics are formulated in the real-time scheduling model. The minimum headway constraints are also taken into account to ensure the running safety of trains in urban rail transit. The resulting real-time scheduling problem is a nonlinear non-convex programming problem, which can be solved using state-of-the art algorithms to obtain the optimal departure times, running times, and dwell times of trains. A case study based on the data of Beijing Yizhuang line is used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach.