A Tactical Planning Model for Railroad Transportation of Dangerous Goods

Railroad transportation of hazardous materials did not receive as much attention as highway transportation in the academic literature, although comparable volumes are shipped via these two transport modes in North America and Europe. In this paper, we present an optimization methodology for the railroad tactical planning problem with risk and cost objectives. We determine the routes to be used for each shipment, the yard activities, and the number of trains of different types needed in the network. The transport risk assessment component of our model incorporates the differentiating characteristics of railroad operations. We develop a memetic algorithm-based solution methodology, which combines genetic and local searches, to solve the biobjective model. The railroad infrastructure in the midwestern United States is used as a basis for generating problem instances of the size encountered in real life. Our analyses of the solutions of instances indicate that it is possible to achieve significant reductions in population exposure without incurring unacceptable increases in operational costs.