Operation Mode and Rational Travelling Distance of Overnight Trains in Chinese High Speed Railways

With great-leap-forward development in the last decade, the operation of high speed railway in China has entered into network era from single line. With expanded service area and long traveling time, the high speed railway in China is qualified for overnight operation in net structure and time space, which is significantly different from that of high speed railway in other countries and areas. The overnight operation of high speed railway is of significance for capacity utilization improvement, besides diverse travelling demand in time horizon. Waiting, transferring, running and maintenance in adjacent lines meanwhile, and periodic operation are the alternative modes for overnight operation. The technical condition, operation feature and applicability are presented, respectively. With rational range of departure time from original station and arrival time at destination, spatial span of network in vertical and horizontal direction, maintenance demand taken into consideration, the rational travelling distance of overnight high speed train are calculated with different operation mode and travelling speed. The work in this paper on operation mode and rational travelling distance is salutary and leading, which provides particular supports for night operation in Chinese high speed railway, in theory and technique.