01157033

Component

Throughout the world urban rail transit systems are being extended due to their large capacity, avoidance of traffic congestion, environmental advantages and favorable effects on urban development. Various studies have been conducted to help locate transit stations or design track alignment, but most of them did not account for the interactions between station locations and track alignment. This paper presents a practical rail transit alignment optimization methodology, which can design track alignment connecting several major stations. The method can generate alignments that pass through preset station locations while meeting the special geometry constraints at these stations. The paper also proposes a heuristic based on a Genetic Algorithm to efficiently search for solutions while interacting with the supporting geographic information systems (GIS) system. Its current objective function is construction cost minimization but the search algorithm is designed to optimize any function that can be evaluated with available geographic GIS data. The Baltimore Red Line is used as a case study. Numerical results demonstrate that the model can find very good solutions in regions with complex topographical features.

01147878

10-2837

English

23p

2010

Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures; Maps; Photos; References (42) ; Tables (3)

Alignment; Geographic information systems; Public transit; Rail transit; Rail transit stations; Railroad tracks; Railroad transportation; Traffic congestion; Urban development

Railroad capacity

Baltimore (Maryland)

Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Railroads; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2010 Paper #10-2837

TRIS, TRB

Jan 25 2010 11:23AM