Energy-Efficient Line Planning by Implementing Express Lines

Abstract

While a shift from individual transport to public transport reduces greenhouse gas emissions, public transport itself also consumes a non-negligible amount of energy. Acceleration processes have a high part in that, especially in urban transportation networks where stops are not far from each other. Express lines which skip stops hence use less energy than a vehicle on a normal line on the same route. Additionally, they increase the attractiveness of public transport by reducing travel times. In this paper, we introduce the express line planning problem ELP which extends the well-known line planning problem by the additional planning of express lines and which stops they skip. The problem is stated in a bicriteria setting minimizing the passengers travel time and the energy consumption of the public transport system. We investigate the problem’s complexity and develop two different MIP formulations and show their equivalence. The models are tested numerically on medium sized instances.