Cooperative Optimization Method for Train Timetabling Problem of Railway Network

As a core technology and a difficult work for network and information construction of railways, train timetabling problem of railway network is an important issue to keep the orderliness in sections. Based on the analysis of its own speciality, a train timetabling optimal model for railway network with both single track and double track lines was set up according to the discrete event system characteristics. In this way, the consistency of description and solution for complex railway network are met. A collaborative evolutionary ant colony algorithm was presented to realize integrated operation of railway network based on the optimization policy and algorithm for multi-layers coordination. In addition, the mechanism of collaborative evolution was adopted in the calculation of fitness function value to ensure that the fitness of individual changes sensitively with the changing of collaboration schemes, accordingly avoiding the search procedure sinking into local optima. A specific railway network is taken as an example to simulate this method, which showed it can could guarantee practicability and adaptability for complex network structure, and meet the actual demands.