Coordination optimization for railway track group overhaul and transportation organization

High density and high speed of train operations accelerate dynamic interactions between wheel and rail of high-speed railway. This frequently results in track system wear and tear, which may cause traffic accidents, affecting safety and leading to severe economic loss. In order to ensure safety, regular track overhaul is inevitable. However, track overhaul planning can be highly disruptive to the normal night-time train schedule. Due to the increasing demands for track overhaul, the “rectangular” maintenance window is no longer sufficient. This study presents a transportation organization approach based on group overhaul strategy, known as the segmented rectangular window, considering the structural interdependencies of track system. We established a mixed-integer linear programming model aiming to minimize the costs of maintenance, train delays, and track occupation, and solve it using the commercial solver CPLEX. A case study of Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed railway is presented to illustrate the superiority of the proposed approach. The collaborative strategy for track group overhaul and segmented rectangular window transportation organization enables a total cost reduction of 45.88% for the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed railway.