SCHEDULING RAILWAY FREIGHT DELIVERY APPOINTMENTS USING A BID PRICE APPROACH

This paper proposes a new method for managing a reservations-based, capacity-constrained car scheduling process for freight railroads. The concept of scheduling individualized delivery appointment times is patterned after current motor carrier industry practice, so that customers can plan for rail or truck deliveries in the same way. A very simple, linear-programming-based formulation is proposed for both the dynamic car scheduling for shipments already accepted and a stochastic train segment pricing for forecasting future demands which have not yet called in and for which delivery appointments have yet to be scheduled. Both are formulated as multi-commodity network flow problems, where each shipment is treated as a separate commodity. Gain coefficients represent recapture probabilities that a specific customer will accept a carrier's service offer. This research also suggests a method for computing a "real dollar" objective function for future locomotive and crew distribution systems, allowing a direct tradeoff between the value versus the costs of providing extra capacity. The appendix uses a Lagrangian heuristic to obtain a primal solution for measurement of the duality gap.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/09658564
• Corporate Authors:

  Elsevier

  The Boulevard, Langford Lane
  Kidlington, Oxford  United Kingdom  OX5 1GB
• Authors:
  • Kraft, E R
• Publication Date: 2002-2

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: p. 145-165
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
  • Volume: 36
  • Issue Number: 2
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0965-8564
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09658564

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bids; Delivery service; Forecasting; Freight trains; Lagrangian functions; Linear programming; Pricing; Railcar utilization; Railroads; Reservations; Revenues; Scheduling; Shipments; Trucks
• Uncontrolled Terms: Multi-commodity network flow
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Finance; Freight Transportation; Motor Carriers; Railroads;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00823559
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jan 21 2002 12:00AM