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How to find good night train connections
Author(s) -
Gunkel Thorsten,
Schnee Mathias,
Müller–Hannemann Matthias
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
networks
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.977
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1097-0037
pISSN - 0028-3045
DOI - 10.1002/net.20380
Subject(s) - computer science , point (geometry) , focus (optics) , contrast (vision) , operations research , real time computing , artificial intelligence , mathematics , physics , geometry , optics
The search for attractive night train connections is fundamentally different from ordinary search: the primary objective of a customer of a night train is to have a reasonably long sleeping period without interruptions due to train changes. For most passengers it is also undesirable to reach the final destination too early in the morning. These objectives are in sharp contrast to standard information systems which focus on minimizing the total travel time. In this article, we present and compare two new approaches to support queries for night train connections. These approaches have been integrated into the Multi‐Objective Traffic Information System (MOTIS), which is currently being developed by our group. Its purpose is to find all train connections which are attractive from a customer point of view. Using a computational study, we demonstrate that our specialized algorithms for night train connections are able to satisfy customer queries much better than standard methods. This can be achieved with reasonable computational costs: a specialized night train search requires only a few seconds of CPU time. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, 2011