Optimization of Train Operation Strategy for Single-track Freight Railway Based on Cooperative Game Theory

Single-track railways play an important role in freight railway networks. The increasing demand for transportation cannot be met by the current railway capacity. Due to the single-track railway having only one track in the section, potential conflicts exist in trains. In view of this, the same dwell time at each intermediate station is adopted in conventional operation strategies. To improve line utilization, cooperative game theory is employed to addresses the optimization of the dwell time and departure interval of trains. Specifically, a cooperative operation model is constructed to minimize the game cost which is composed of the departure interval at starting station, total dwell time and running time of trains. The Shapley theorem is applied to allocate the operational time among the trains. An improved coyote optimization algorithm (ICOA) is designed to obtain the operation strategy. Finally, a case study is conducted on a single-track freight railway in China to verify the effectiveness of operation strategy.