Mixed Trips in the School Bus Routing Problem with Public Subsidy

Abstract

In some regions, school buses have a subsidy associated with the number of school buses needed in a day, in relation to the number of schools or students. This paper presents the application of a Tabu Search (TS) metaheuristic to generate an information system that will allow searching for the best selection of routes and schedules with the minimum number of buses. The complexity and magnitude of the problem is important, especially at economic level for Andalusia government, because there are many buses and roads to go to school. The approach is more relevant for the necessary austerity in public services, considering that the quality is guaranteed by a set of restrictions. In the mixed trip problem, students of different schools can share the same bus at the same time. We use a mixed load algorithm for the school bus routing problem (SBRP) and measure its effects on the number of required vehicles. The solution could reduce the required number of vehicles compared with the current practice.