Railway route optimisation from Romania to Poland based on an analysis of China's 'One Belt and One Road' initiative

Abstract

With the proposal of the 'One Belt and One Road' initiative, a new strategic route is underway which travels from China to Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Romania, Poland, and Western Europe. This paper focuses on the railway route between Romania and Poland. A dynamic programming model is established to find optimised railway routes. In the optimisation model, the transhipment stations on country borders are set as constraints. By accounting for the transit service abilities of railway stations, we estimate the total transportation time using Monte Carlo simulations, and obtain the two best routes. We found that the Nevelenfolu railway station may become a bottleneck. Therefore, future upgrades of the Nevetlenfolu railway station will be vital. At present, these railway lines have not played role in trade between China and Europe, but they may become important transportation lines in the future.