Evaluation of Energy Consumption Level of Urban Rail Train Operation Plans: A Case Study

Energy-efficient operation is an effective way to reduce the energy consumption of urban rail trains. Based on the train operation plans for rail dispatching, this paper studies the evaluation of the energy consumption level of urban rail transit operation. To effectively describe the capability and potentials of the time schedule, an optimization-based evaluation framework is presented to calculate the possible speed curves of planned trains. By comparing the optimized curves with the referencing results, the energy-saving capability of the trains under the time constraints can be computed. The presented framework is tested with a case study using field data. The results show that the utilization of the optimized solution can reduce the energy consumption by applying the presented optimization method in determining the speed profiles.