Metro crew scheduling with fairness consideration in the fully automated operating environment
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
2025
Subject Area
mode - subway/metro, place - asia, place - urban, technology - intelligent transport systems, organisation - workforce planning
Keywords
Crew scheduling, Fairness, Fully automated operating environment, Column generation, Insertion heuristic
Abstract
The fully automatic operation mode within the metro system is esteemed for its heightened operational efficiency and enhanced environmental sustainability, with trains being fully automated without any on-train staff. However, during the initial stage of implementing fully automatic operations, crew members are still required to perform on-train supervision tasks for certain minimum required time to ensure safety. In this flexible supervision mode, crew members prioritize the equitable distribution of workload throughout the day, leading to the emergence of a new crew scheduling problem with fairness considerations (CSPwFC) under the flexible mode. This poses a challenge, as the solution space has significantly expanded. Our work represents an initial effort to tackle this CSPwFC. For this problem, we have developed both sequential and integrated modeling and solving frameworks. In the sequential framework, we first model and solve the crew scheduling problem (CSP) with the primary objective of minimizing costs. This approach utilizes a path-based model on a customized time-space network, which is solved using a column generation heuristic. Subsequently, we design an insertion heuristic to address the secondary objective of ensuring fairness in workload distribution. In the integrated framework, the CSPwFC is formulated as an integer program on the same time-space network and solved using a newly developed branch-and-price algorithm. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, computational experiments were conducted using randomly generated test instances that reflect the characteristics of Hefei Metro Lines 1 and 5. The results demonstrate that the proposed methods can generate high-quality crew schedules.
Rights
Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Elsevier, copyright remains with them.
Recommended Citation
Dong, J., Xu, X., Long, J., & Yu, Y. (2025). Metro crew scheduling with fairness consideration in the fully automated operating environment. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 178, 105204.
Comments
Transportation Research Part C Home Page:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0968090X