Optimizing Rail Journeys with Simultaneous Improvement in Energy Consumption and Service Quality

Abstract: Nowadays, with rapid development of the state-of-the-art railway transportation systems, requirements in expanding energy resources and better service quality are increased.  Competitors in this field will probably focus on how to execute an optimal journey, which not only maximizes the service quality but also takes minimum energy consumption. This paper aimed to achieve efficient travel by a train under some predefined constraints in track profile and speed limits. In this context, multi-objective evolutionary techniques including NSGA-II and MOPSO are modified and adapted to accomplish the regarding speed trajectories with two conflict objectives i.e. minimum energy consumption and minimum journey time delay. In order to make the travel more comfortable, some equations are developed and influenced into the optimization process. Robustness of the solutions is regarded as an additional criterion for proving the efficiency of the achieved solutions.