14 Transportation

Preface Transportation sustains economic and social activity and is central to operations research and management science. When operations research emerged as a structured field during World War II, some of the first problems inves- tigated arose from the need to optimize military logistics and transportation activities. After the war ended, the scope of operations research applications broadened but transportation problems always occupied a central place. It is now widely recognized that some of the most successful applications of operations research are encountered in transportation, most significantly in the airline industry where it underlies almost every aspect of strategic, tactical, and operational planning. This success story may be explained by a number of factors, the first being the economic importance of transportation. Also, the complexity and large scale of transportation problems call for powerful analyt- ical techniques, and the high volumes involved imply that substantial savings can often be achieved through the use of optimization. Furthermore, transportation problems are highly structured, making them amenable to the use of efficient solution methods based on network optimization techniques and mathematical programming. This book contains eleven chapters describing some of the most recent met hodologi cal operat ions res earch developments in transportation. It is structured around the main transportation modes, and each chapter is writ- ten by a group of well-recognized researchers. Because of the major impact of operations research methods in the field of air transportation over the past forty years , it is befitting to open the book with a chapter on airli ne operations management. While many past publications have focused on airline strategic and tactical planning, Ball, Barnhart, Nemhauser, and Odoni have chosen to address the organization and control of recovery operations in the event of disturbances. This line of research is relatively new and of major importance to the airline industry. The second chapter, by Desaulniers and Hickman, sur- veys the planning of public transit operations. The problems addressed and the methods employed in transit planning, for example, those arising in network design, passenger assignment, scheduling, and fleet and crew assignment, are often similar to those of the airlines. The railway optimization chapter, by Caprara, Kroon, Monaci, Peeters, and Toth, covers the realm of planning problems encount ered in railway planning, with an emphasis on Eur opean passenger railways. Again, several of these issues are similar to those observed in other modes, but some problems are specific to the railway industry, such as train platforming, rolling stock circulation, and train unit shunting. The fourth v

14 Transportation

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