Air-rail timetable synchronization for a seamless passenger journey

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to generate an integrated air-rail timetable at a hub airport with direct access to a train station. A passenger-oriented metric is introduced to assess the connection time between trains and flights. In order not to impact severely initial flight and train schedules, only small perturbations on the initial timetable are authorized. An integer linear programming formulation is proposed based on this metric. An approached resolution method is implemented to solve the optimization problem. Solution quality and computational time are compared with an exact resolution method. Computational results on the case study of Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport are presented. Results show that a change of an average 11 minutes in schedules could increase passenger comfort by almost 10%.