Optimal High-Speed Passenger Transport Network with Minimal Integrated Construction and Operation Energy Consumption Based on Superstructure Model

Economy development and promotion of high-speed transport technologies result in the increase of inter-city high-speed passenger transport. The energy consumption over the lifetime of transport infrastructure, composed of construction and operation energy consumption, is a significant factor that should be considered at the planning stage. In this paper, we present a mixed-integer programming (MIP) model based on superstructure for the energy consumption optimization of inter-city high-speed transport systems, a network design integration of aviation and high-speed railway, accounting both energy consumption during infrastructure construction and energy consumption during subsequent operation processes, to optimize connections between large population centers and connections between modes of transport. Energy consumption during infrastructure construction is obtained related to investment costs using a lifecycle assessment based on the economic input-output method. The shares of construction energy consumption and operation energy consumption during infrastructure lifetime are compared in the case studies of East and Southeast China and the model results show the optimized network structure according to the total energy minimization objective. Optimized transport networks are analyzed in terms of hub-spoke characteristics and city transport functions as sources and sinks. Model results have implications in the energy-saving aspect for actual high-speed railway and civil aviation infrastructure layouts and high-speed transport technology development.