Urban freight transport using passenger rail network: Scientific issues and quantitative analysis

•We investigate urban freight transportation using passenger rail network.•We identify relevant issues at strategical, tactical and operational levels.•We study the Freight-Rail-Transport-Scheduling Problem.•We formulate the studied problem into a mixed integer program.•We propose many heuristics to solve the problem.•We develop a discrete-event simulation framework. This paper addresses a real-life problem arising in the ongoing “Grand Paris” project. We investigate an environment-friendly urban freight transportation alternative using passenger rail network, by providing a decision support tool for decision makers to assess the technical feasibility, the impact on services to passengers, the needs in infrastructure and hence in investment. We identify relevant scientific issues that need to be addressed in this topic at strategical, tactical and operational levels. Then we focus on the Freight-Rail-Transport-Scheduling Problem which provides valuable information to and constitutes a basis for other related problems. This problem is first formulated into a MIP. We prove its NP-hardness and hence propose a heuristic based on dispatching rules and a single-train-based decomposition heuristic. The performances of these heuristics are evaluated via employing a discrete-event simulation approach, which also provides a general framework which supports decision-makers in modelling and evaluating the dynamics of such a system for various alternative solutions under various scenarios.