Weekly train timetabling approach for high-speed railway lines

Traditional train timetabling methods typically schedule trains for periods ranging from half an hour to a single day, often neglecting the fluctuations in passenger demand over an entire week. To overcome this limitation, this study proposes a weekly train timetabling (WTT) model that schedules trains for the entire week. To effectively implement the WTT model under practical high-speed railway (HSR) scenarios, an Estimate-Generation-Evaluate (EGE) solution process is introduced, incorporating a customised hierarchical train generation strategy. Testing the EGE process on Chinese HSR lines demonstrates its superior performance improvement over CPLEX. Compared to manually generated timetables, the weekly timetable produced by EGE enhances passenger travel speeds and better aligns train schedules with passenger demand patterns. Further comparisons between solutions for two typical HSR lines verify the universality and robustness of the proposed approach.