Railway Rolling Stock Assignment for Passenger Trains

As the demand for transportation increases so does the need for efficiently managing the available transportation resources. Railway transportation in specific provides a tempting alternative for transportation due to its reduced effect on the environment, lower cost and reliability. One of the most important assets to manage in the railway is the rolling stock. The Rolling Stock Rotation Problem (RSRP) aims to the utilization of available rolling stock efficiently to reduce operating costs and satisfy multiple restrictions. The Rolling Stock Assignment Problem (RSAP) is a subset of the RSRP. The RSAP aims to assign the available rolling stock to a specific timetable that is run on predetermined routes. In this paper, a new mathematical model is introduced to solve the Rolling Stock Assignment Problem. The model was implemented on two phases. First the model is tested and verified on a small case study of the Alexandria City Tram El-Raml network. In the second phase, the model is implemented on a total of 65 instances from which 45 were solved to optimality.