English

An efficient memetic, permutation-based evolutionary algorithm for real-world train timetabling

Artificial Intelligence 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

Train timetabling is a difficult and very tightly constrained combinatorial problem that deals with the construction of train schedules. We focus on the particular problem of local reconstruction of the schedule following a small perturbation, seeking minimisation of the total accumulated delay by adapting times of departure and arrival for each train and allocation of resources (tracks, routing nodes, etc.). We describe a permutation-based evolutionary algorithm that relies on a semi-greedy heuristic to gradually reconstruct the schedule by inserting trains one after the other following the permutation. This algorithm can be hybridised with ILOG commercial MIP programming tool CPLEX in a coarse-grained manner: the evolutionary part is used to quickly obtain a good but suboptimal solution and this intermediate solution is refined using CPLEX. Experimental results are presented on a large real-world case involving more than one million variables and 2 million constraints. Results are surprisingly good as the evolutionary algorithm, alone or hybridised, produces excellent solutions much faster than CPLEX alone.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cs/0510091,
  title  = {An efficient memetic, permutation-based evolutionary algorithm for real-world train timetabling},
  author = {Marc Schoenauer and Yann Semet},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0510091},
  year   = {2007}
}