Travel route options for passengers can provide data support for railway line planning, passenger flow organisation, and train operation establishment. A critical review of the literature indicates that previous studies mainly focused on choices offered by a single railway network path without much consideration of China’s normal-speed and high-speed integrated railway network and the effect of train timetable on passengers’ travel choice. In this study, a method based on generalised cost is proposed to discover the valid routes of passenger travel in the integrated network of China’s normal-speed and high-speed railways. After quantifying the effects of train fare, travel time, transfer, travel convenience, comfort, and other factors on the generalised expenses of passengers, this study presents a generalised cost determination method when individuals select an option from different seats of different trains of specific railway transport products. Theoretically, the valid routes considering the train schedule is defined, and a valid route search algorithm is designed using the deep traversal idea in a new valid route searching network. Considering the Lanzhou-Beijing passenger travel routes as an example, this study verifies the practicability of the generalised cost calculation method, as well as that of the valid routes search method.
Method for Determining the Valid Travel Route of Railways Based on Generalised Cost under the Syncretic Railway Network