A methodology for passenger-centred rail network optimisation

Optimising the allocation of limited resources, be they existing assets or
investment, is an ongoing challenge for rail network managers. Recently,
methodologies have been developed for optimising the timetable from the
passenger perspective. However, there is a gap for a decision support tool
which optimises rail networks for maximum passenger satisfaction, captures
the experience of individual passengers and can be adapted to different
networks and challenges. Towards building such a tool, this thesis develops a
novel methodology referred to as the Sheffield University Passenger Rail
Experience Maximiser (SUPREME) framework. First, a network assessment
metric is developed which captures the multi-stage nature of individual
passenger journeys as well as the effect of crowding upon passenger
satisfaction. Second, an agent-based simulation is developed to capture
individual passenger journeys in enough detail for the network assessment
metric to be calculated. Third, for the optimisation algorithm within SUPREME,
the Bayesian Optimisation method is selected following an experimental
investigation which indicates that it is well suited for ‘expensive-to-compute’
objective functions, such as the one found in SUPREME. Finally, in case studies
that include optimising the value engineering strategy of the proposed UK High
Speed Two network when saving £5 billion initial investment costs, the
SUPREME framework is found to improve network performance by the order
of 10%. This thesis shows that the SUPREME framework can find ‘good’
resource allocations for a ‘reasonable’ computational cost, and is sufficiently
adaptable for application to many rail network challenges. This indicates that a
decision support tool developed on the SUPREME framework could be widely
applied by network managers to improve passenger experience and increase
ticket revenue. Novel contributions made by this thesis are: the SUPREME
methodology, an international comparison between the Journey Time Metric
and Disutility Metric, and the application of the Bayesian Optimisation method
for maximising the performance of a rail network.