Bus routing in a multi-school system

Abstract

This paper describes and evaluates a practical computer based method for translating data concerning (1) the location of each school in a multi-school system to be serviced by a bus fleet, (2) the location of each student to be transported to each school, (3) the time period during which students assigned to each school are to be transported, and (4) the available bus facilities into a set of bus routes which specify school-to-school sequencing of each bus and the stop-to-stop route to be followed in traveling to every school. Each route is designed so that bus capacity and student riding time constraints are satisfied while attempting to minimize both total bus travel time (including running empty) and the number of routes required to service all the stops associated with the school. The mathematical models developed were programmed in FORTRAN IV for use on a CDC 6400 computer and were applied to four schools in a Western New York school district. For each school the routing system determined by these mathematical models was better in terms of number of buses and/or travel time than the system in current use. Furthermore, computation time was very reasonable (from 6.9 sec for 596 students, 37 stops to 136.9 sec for 1097 students, 76 stops).