Improving Public School Bus Operations Boston and Baltimore County Public Schools

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 and also impacts students relying on school buses to commute to their schools. In fact, a common problem facing schools is students arriving late for breakfast and/or classes. The objective of this research is to develop a system that allows the Boston Public Schools (BPS) and Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) to transport students to and from schools in a safe, reliable, and optimum manner. Due to BPS and BCPS's system of school choice and geography, some students need to travel long distances to attend school. This problem is complex and has many dimensions, and we built a system that uses historical and real-time traffic data to predict the traffic state evolution over a short time horizon. This is then coupled to an advanced routing algorithm to route buses in an optimal fashion to improve the quality of service.

• Record URL:
  https://www.morgan.edu/school_of_engineering/research_centers/urban_mobility_and_equity_center/research/completed_research/school_bus_operations.html

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• 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 & 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: 20200300
• 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 & Equity Center
• Contract Numbers: Grant#69A435551747123
• Files: UTC, RiP
• Created Date: Oct 17 2018 12:34PM