#6430. A Variable Neighborhood Search heuristic for rolling stock rescheduling

November 2026publication date
Proposal available till 08-06-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

The title of the journal is available only for the authors who have already paid for
Journal’s subject area:
Modeling and Simulation;
Management Science and Operations Research;
Transportation;
Places in the authors’ list:
place 1place 2place 3place 4
FreeFreeFreeFree
2350 $1200 $1050 $900 $
Contract №6430.1 Contract №6430.2 Contract №6430.3 Contract №6430.4
1 place - free (for sale)
2 place - free (for sale)
3 place - free (for sale)
4 place - free (for sale)

Abstract:
We present a Variable Neighborhood Search heuristic for the rolling stock rescheduling problem. Rolling stock rescheduling is needed when a disruption leads to cancellations in the timetable. In rolling stock rescheduling, one must then assign duties, i.e., sequences of trips, to the available train units in such a way that both passenger comfort and operational performance are taken into account. For our heuristic, we introduce three neighborhoods, which focus on swapping duties between train units, on improving the individual duties and on changing the shunting that occurs between trips, respectively. These neighborhoods are used for both a Variable Neighborhood Descent local search procedure and for perturbing the current solution in order to escape from local optima. Moreover, we show that the heuristic can be extended to the setting of flexible rolling stock turnings at ending stations by introducing a fourth neighborhood. We apply our heuristic to instances of Netherlands Railways (NS).
Keywords:
Disruption management; Rolling stock rescheduling; Variable neighborhood search

Contacts :
0