Optimum Location Analysis for an Infrastructure Maintenance Depot in Urban Railway Networks

Abstract

Urban railway networks have an important role in increasing the mobility of urban populations while decreasing congestion and pollution. Railway network extension that is caused by urban growth requires additional specialists and equipment for the operation, which causes an increase in maintenance cost. A comprehensive review of the literature regarding the application of facility location problem (FLP) in the railway domain found that there are few studies, and most of the current research involves the maintenance of railway vehicles only. In this paper, the purpose of this study is to determine the optimal location of infrastructure maintenance depot (IMD) for storing special vehicles and to support the inspection and maintenance tasks in a timely and efficient manner. For a challenging problem that should reflect the characteristic that traffic load and the deterioration of railway tracks are proportional, we proposed a method of applying maintenance weights to the p-hub median problem. To examine the proposed model, the test network was constructed by collecting information on the Seoul metropolitan subway. The results of case studies show that the number and location of IMDs are significantly affected by maintenance demand and expanded network.