Multi-depot and Multi-school Bus Scheduling Problem with School Bell Time Optimization

Public school systems are responsible for transporting students to and from schools safely and promptly. For a multi-school system, given all the bus trips of schools, the school bus scheduling problem aims at developing an efficient schedule of operation for buses to serve all the trips at minimum operation cost while satisfying some necessary constraints. As for school buses, they usually operate from multiple depots and are required to return to the same depot as they started from. However, most existing studies have concentrated on the single-depot school bus scheduling problem, which assumes that all the buses start from the same depot. This research studies the multi-depot and multi-school bus scheduling problem with school bell time optimization (MDBSPBO) with the goal of minimizing the total number of buses and the total deadhead duration. Spreading bell times, which change the bell times within a reasonable time window, makes more trips become compatible and could reduce the total number of buses. The research team will develop appropriate models and solution algorithms for this very important real-world problem. The team will use real-world data supplied by one of the public school systems in the state of Maryland for testing and evaluation of the model.

• Record URL:
  https://www.morgan.edu/school_of_engineering/research_centers/urban_mobility_and_equity_center/research/new_research/multi-depot_school_bus.html

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $150000
• Contract Numbers:

  69A43551747123

• 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:

  University of Maryland, College Park

  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  College Park, MD  United States  20742
• Principal Investigators:

  Haghani, Ali

• Start Date: 20201101
• Expected Completion Date: 20211231
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Algorithms; Optimization; Schedules and scheduling; School buses; Schools
• Geographic Terms: Maryland
• Subject Areas: Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01742334
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Urban Mobility & Equity Center
• Contract Numbers: 69A43551747123
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jun 12 2020 1:39PM