A Tactical Planning Model for Railroad Transportation of Dangerous Goods

Authors:
Manish Verma;Vedat Verter;Michel Gendreau
Affiliations:
Faculty of Business Administration, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland A1B 3X5, Canada;Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montréal, Québec H3A 1G5, Canada;CIRRELT and Département de Mathématiques et Génie Industriel, École Polytechnique, Montréal, Québec H3C 3A7, Canada
Venue:
Transportation Science
Year:
2011

Citing 5
Cited 1

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Abstract

Railroad transportation of hazardous materials did not receive as much attention as highway transportation in the academic literature, although comparable volumes are shipped via these two transport modes in North America and Europe. In this paper, we present an optimization methodology for the railroad tactical planning problem with risk and cost objectives. We determine the routes to be used for each shipment, the yard activities, and the number of trains of different types needed in the network. The transport risk assessment component of our model incorporates the differentiating characteristics of railroad operations. We develop a memetic algorithm-based solution methodology, which combines genetic and local searches, to solve the biobjective model. The railroad infrastructure in the midwestern United States is used as a basis for generating problem instances of the size encountered in real life. Our analyses of the solutions of instances indicate that it is possible to achieve significant reductions in population exposure without incurring unacceptable increases in operational costs.