Service network design for freight railway transportation: The Chinese case

Service network design is a typical tactical planning problem faced in freight railway transportation. In this paper, we propose an integer linear programming model for the rail freight service network design problem in the context of the China railway system. The model aims to minimize the overall costs (including train costs and car costs) while satisfying a set of practical restrictions and operational requirements. Our model also considers a distinct operational feature in Chinese railway transportation practice, i.e., the tree-shaped path. A numerical experiment as well as a real-life case study from the China Railway Jinan Group (CR Jinan) is conducted to demonstrate the proposed solution approach. The real-life problem size reaches as many as 139 stations, 473 alternative train services and 562 shipments. Computational results show that our proposed approach is able to obtain quality solutions within a reasonable time frame.