Scheduling the vehicles of bus rapid transit systems: a case study


SEVİM İ., Tekiner-Mogulkoc H., GÜLER M. G.

INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, vol.29, no.1, pp.347-371, 2022 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 29 Issue: 1
  • Publication Date: 2022
  • Doi Number: 10.1111/itor.12763
  • Journal Name: INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, ABI/INFORM, Aerospace Database, Business Source Elite, Business Source Premier, Communication Abstracts, Compendex, INSPEC, Metadex, zbMATH, Civil Engineering Abstracts
  • Page Numbers: pp.347-371
  • Keywords: bus rapid transit system, heuristics, multiple depots, vehicle scheduling
  • Yıldız Technical University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Bus rapid transit (BRT) is a cost-efficient, traffic-free bus-based transportation system competing with subways. There are 205 municipalities around the world that implemented their own BRT systems. Istanbul, having the sixth-most congested traffic in the world, built its own BRT system (Metrobus), which serves more than 830,000 people (6.45% of all public transportation usage) in a day with 6254 trips covered by its current fleet of 496 vehicles. In this study, we model the vehicle scheduling problem of Metrobus as a multiple depot vehicle scheduling problem. The model aims to minimize the fleet size and total deadhead kilometers while covering all timetabled trips. We propose a new heuristic, trips merger (TM), to solve the model and show that there exists cost reduction opportunities in terms of both fleet size and deadhead kilometers. The proposed heuristic is a member of the state-space reduction heuristics family, which first reduces the problem size, then solves the reduced problem. Computational study reveals that TM performed better than the existing state-space reduction heuristics for the Metrobus case.