A sustainable hub location-allocation model considering the inspection of defective wagons in the rail freight network

The increasing demand for rail transport necessitates an effective transportation network design for the shipment of goods with minimum cost and time. Since the breakdown of wagons is a main delay factor in rail transportation, the maintenance and repairs of defective wagons becomes prominent. In this study, main stations are considered as hubs, and hubs are places where defective wagons are collected. For this purpose, a robust multi-objective mathematical model is proposed to minimise transportation costs considering customer demand. Also, the model seeks to minimise the total transportation time and emissions. The AEC method is exploited to solve and validate the proposed model. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis is performed to demonstrate the effect of changing the main parameters on the outcomes. The results show that repairs and maintenance can affect the capacity. Also, the findings demonstrate the applicability and validity of the proposed model in the railway sector. [Submitted: 29 May 2023; Accepted: 16 January 2024]