Abstract
In this article, we study the school bus routing and scheduling problem with transfers arising in the field of nonperiodic public transportation systems. It deals with the transportation of pupils from home to their school in the morning taking the possibility that pupils may change buses into account. Allowing transfers has several consequences. On the one hand, it allows more flexibility in the bus network structure and can, therefore, help to reduce operating costs. On the other hand, transfers have an impact on the service level: the perceived service quality is lower due to the existence of transfers; however, at the same time, user ride times may be reduced and, thus, transfers may also have a positive impact on service quality. The main objective is the minimization of the total operating costs. We develop a heuristic solution framework to solve this problem and compare it with two solution concepts that do not consider transfers. The impact of transfers on the service level in terms of time loss (or user ride time) and the number of transfers is analyzed. Our results show that allowing transfers reduces total operating costs significantly while average and maximum user ride times are comparable to solutions without transfers. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 65(2), 180–203 2015
Highlights
In the school year 2011/2012 in Austria about 1.1 million pupils attended one of the 6,120 schools [2]
We study the school bus routing and scheduling problem with transfers arising in the field of nonperiodic public transportation systems
Transfers have an impact on the service level: the perceived service quality is lower due to the existence of transfers; at the same time, user ride times may be reduced and, transfers may have a positive impact on service quality
Summary
In the school year 2011/2012 in Austria (population: 8.42 million [1]) about 1.1 million pupils attended one of the 6,120 schools [2]. Other systems provide dedicated bus services for pupils attending primary school, while older pupils have to use public transport. Austria has a mixed system: in general the public transportation network is used for pupil transportation with the exception of rural areas where dedicated services are provided. The school bus routing and scheduling problem can be modeled in different ways. A further generalization of the problem is to allow transfers (i.e., pupils attending different schools can share a single bus and can change the bus during their way to school). Dedicated solution concept for the school bus routing and scheduling problem with transfers, taking into account bus stop selection and pupil assignment, bus routing, and bus scheduling. Last we summarize our findings and suggest further research directions (section 7)
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