An Effective Multi-neighborhood “Tabu” Search Algorithm for Solving Cyclic Railway Timetable Problem

At the present time the railway passenger transportation has a regular schedule in a large number of countries. Obviously, this structure provides a huge number of advantages for passengers, but the formation of an effective train schedule for such infrastructure is a complex and urgent problem now. A lot of researches study this issue, but all of them make the assumption that demand is fixed at any time and does not depend on the contents of the timetable. Now, that there are many other means of transport alternative to the train, this assumption delays severely the task from the real conditions. Therefore, in this paper the problem of creating a timetable for passenger transportation under conditions of variable demand is considered, so that the number of passengers travelling on trains directly depends on the convenience of its traffic schedule.