Fair Railway Network Design

TL;DR

This paper introduces a model and algorithms for designing fair railway networks that balance overall efficiency with equitable access for peripheral cities, using real data experiments.

Contribution

It presents a new model and algorithms for fair railway network design, incorporating fairness considerations into the optimization process.

Findings

Algorithms effectively balance efficiency and fairness.

Real data experiments demonstrate practical applicability.

Proposed solutions improve access for peripheral cities.

Abstract

When designing a public transportation network in a country, one may want to minimise the sum of travel duration of all inhabitants. This corresponds to a purely utilitarian view and does not involve any fairness consideration, as the resulting network will typically benefit the capital city and/or large central cities while leaving some peripheral cities behind. On the other hand, a more egalitarian view will allow some people to travel between peripheral cities without having to go through a central city. We define a model, propose algorithms for computing solution networks, and report on experiments based on real data.