Considering passenger and operator inconvenience in the scheduling of large railway projects

The continued development and renewal of railway infrastructure and technology
is necessary to enable railway operators to provide high quality services subject
to ever increasing demand. However, the execution of large infrastructure projects causes disturbances in the network due to the occupation of infrastructure over extended periods of time. In this paper we propose a multiobjective project scheduling optimization model for railway infrastructure projects that takes inconvenience caused to users of the infrastructure into account. We illustrate how the model can be used in an interactive way by planners based on their preferences, and we show that Pareto optimal solutions can be found in reasonable time using instances with realistic features. The result is a decision support model to aid infrastructure project planners in ensuring that passenger and operator inconvenience are also taken into account.