Integrated Bus Timetabling, Vehicle Scheduling, and Crew Scheduling with a mutation-based evolutionary scheme

Abstract

Public transport planning is a complex process that covers multiple interdependent planning tasks. Traditionally, these tasks are executed sequentially. However, an integrated approach to planning multiple tasks can improve the overall solution. This study focuses on the timetabling, vehicle scheduling, and crew scheduling problems and evaluates the benefits of integrated solution approaches. A mutation-based evolutionary scheme is proposed and applied to different real-world inspired instances to solve a complex integration of all three planning tasks. Integrated solving of all three problems significantly improves the solution quality compared to a sequential approach. In reasonable computational time, the full integration led to reduced vehicle and duty schedule costs and, as a result, reduced overall costs while keeping the service quality equally high.