Unified Crew Planning and Replanning Optimization in Multi-Line Metro Systems Considering Workforce Heterogeneity
This work addresses the need for efficient and reliable public transportation operations in smart cities by enabling better crew management across metro lines, though it is incremental in extending existing methods to multi-line contexts.
The authors tackled the problem of multi-line metro crew scheduling and emergency replanning by developing a unified optimization framework that incorporates workforce heterogeneity, resulting in cost reduction and improved task completion compared to benchmark heuristics, with efficiency gains from cross-line coordination.
Metro crew planning is a key component of smart city development as it directly impacts the operational efficiency and service reliability of public transportation. With the rapid expansion of metro networks, effective multi-line scheduling and emergency management have become essential for large-scale seamless operations. However, current research focuses primarily on individual metro lines,with insufficient attention on cross-line coordination and rapid replanning during disruptions. Here, a unified optimization framework is presented for multi-line metro crew planning and replanning with heterogeneous workforce. Specifically, a hierarchical time-space network model is proposed to represent the unified crew action space, and computationally efficient constraints and formulations are derived for the crew's heterogeneous qualifications and preferences. Solution algorithms based on column generation and shortest path adjustment are further developed, utilizing the proposed network model. Experiments with real data from Shanghai and Beijing Metro demonstrate that the proposed methods outperform benchmark heuristics in both cost reduction and task completion,and achieve notable efficiency gains by incorporating cross-line operations, particularly for urgent tasks during disruptions. This work highlights the role of global optimization and cross-line coordination in multi-line metro system operations, providing insights into the efficient and reliable functioning of public transportation in smart cities.