Optimization of urban rail transit timetables for metropolitan commuter train cross-track operations

Abstract

In order to address the issue of passenger flow imbalance when metropolitan commuter trains cross-operate onto urban rail transit lines, this paper adopts a demand-driven approach. Optimization models are constructed with the goals of minimizing the waiting time for passengers on urban rail transit and minimizing the total travel time for passengers on the metropolitan line. An improved Harris Hawk algorithm is utilized for solving these models. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed models and algorithm, actual operational data from a specific metropolitan line and urban rail transit line are examined. The results indicate that by uniformly adjusting the departure intervals of both the metropolitan and urban rail transit trains, the objective function is reduced by 7.20%, the waiting time for passengers on the urban rail transit line is decreased by 4.96%, and the onboard travel time for metropolitan line passengers is reduced by 11.28%.