Improving Public School Bus Operations: Boston Case Study

Studies show that congestion in big cities has a tremendous impact on the time travelers spend on the road. This is translated into a loss of productivity in the various sectors of the economy. It also impacts students relying on school buses commuting to their schools. In fact, the most common problem facing schools is students arriving late for breakfast and/or classes. This problem is similar in many ways to the famous Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). However, it has interesting features and constraints. For instance, a trip time constraint is imposed and the dynamic transportation environment has high impact on the system performance. The objective of this research effort is to develop a system that gives recommendations to school bus drivers in terms of route selection in order to get the students to their schools on time. The research effort primarily aims at addressing the problems that the Boston Public School (BPS) is currently facing, namely: to transport students to and from schools in a safe, reliable and optimum manner. Currently BPS transportation is used largely by minorities, namely, Hispanic and Black students. Specifically, black students are 70% more likely to use the bus service than white students. Due to BPS' system of school choice, they are more likely to need to travel long distances to be able to attend high quality schools. It is therefore important that an improved service quality be maintained for this transportation system. This problem is complex, has many dimensions and the study team proposes building a system that uses historical and real-time traffic and weather data to predict the traffic state evolution over a short time horizon. This will then be coupled by an advanced routing algorithm to route buses in an optimal fashion to improve the BPS quality of service.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $140000
• Contract Numbers:

  Grant#69A435551747123

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Urban Mobility and Equity Center

  Morgan State University
  Baltimore, MD  United States  21251
• Performing Organizations:

  Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

  3500 Transportation Research Plaza
  Blacksburg, Virginia  United States  24061

  Morgan State University

  1700 E. Cold Spring Lane
  Baltimore, MD 21251, Maryland  United States  21251
• Principal Investigators:

  Bichiou, Youssef

  Rakha, Hesham

  Lee, Young-Jae

• Start Date: 20181201
• Expected Completion Date: 20200301
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Case studies; Optimization; Quality of service; Route choice; Routing; School buses; Traffic congestion; Traveling salesman problem
• Geographic Terms: Boston (Massachusetts)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01683576
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Urban Mobility and Equity Center
• Contract Numbers: Grant#69A435551747123
• Files: UTC, RiP
• Created Date: Oct 17 2018 12:34PM