A case study of Beijing bus crew scheduling: a variable neighborhood‐based approach

Abstract

SUMMARYCrew scheduling for bus drivers in large bus agencies is known to be a time-consuming and cumbersome problem in transit operations planning. This paper investigates a new meta-heuristics approach for solving real-world bus-driver scheduling problems. The drivers' work is represented as a series of successive pieces of work with time windows, and a variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm is employed to solve the problem of driver scheduling. Examination of the modeling procedure developed is performed by a case study of two depots of the Beijing Public Transport Group, one of the largest transit companies in the world. The results show that a VNS-based algorithm can reduce total driver costs by up to 18.1%, implying that the VNS algorithm may be regarded as a good optimization technique to solve the bus-driver scheduling problem.

A Branch-and-Price-and-Cut Algorithm for the Integrated Scheduling and Rostering Problem of Bus Drivers

“…en, a tabu search algorithm is proposed to solve the model. Ma et al [2] proposed a variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm to solve the bus driver scheduling problem. In the case study of two depots of the Beijing Public Transport Group, the results showed that the VNS-based algorithm is able to effectively reduce the total driver costs.…”

“…After reviewing the abovementioned literature regarding the crew management problem, this paper summarizes the observations as follows: (1) e column generation technique is the mainstream method for the crew management problem. (2) ere are limited studies on the integrated model due to the computational challenge of each scheduling and rostering problem.…”

“…(1) No delay or early departure. All the tasks are performed on time according to a published bus timetable (2) No overtime or insufficient rest/break time. e rest/ break time and maximum working hours regulated by the labor and contractual rules cannot be violated (3) Identical drivers.…”

“…As each duty assigned in each day needs to be performed by a driver, minimizing the days of a roster is equivalent to minimizing the number of drivers needed to execute the roster. Constraint (2) ensures that each cell j of group i of day d in week w has been assigned a task. Constraint (3) ensures that each task, t, will be performed.…”

“…A bus company typically needs to address several issues regarding its daily operation: timetabling, vehicle scheduling, crew scheduling, and crew rostering [1]. Ma et al [2] noted that crew scheduling and rostering are the importance activities in the bus operation process. e scheduling and rostering problems are closely related and are typically decomposed into two phases because of the significant complexity when considered simultaneously.…”