An object-oriented, constraint-based heuristic for a class of passenger-train scheduling problems

A constraint-based heuristic technique for predictive scheduling of passeng er trains is presented in this paper. The algorithm, which is lookahead, ha s been designed using an object-oriented methodology and is suitable for a single-track railway with some double-track sections. It is shown that the heuristic tends to minimize total waiting time of the trains concerned. Sim ulation experiments with real data show the superiority of the schedules cr eated to those by human experts with reference to data provided from predic tive timetables and specifications of Iran Railways.