Efficient Heuristic Methods for Minimizing the Cost of City Bus Operations of Indian Urban Road Transportation Organizations

Abstract

The statistics on financial performances of Indian-Urban Road Transportation Organizations (I-URTOs) indicate that almost every I-URTO is facing huge losses in operating city buses. Considering monetary loss and increased fuel cost, there is a need to address decision problem(s) to minimize the cost of city bus operations (CCBO) without increasing bus fares. These buses traverse many non-revenue generating distances. One such distance is the 'dead kilometers' (DK) which is the summation of the distance traversed from the depot to starting point of first trip and ending point of last trip to the depot without carrying passengers. A report by the Central Institute of Road Transport (CIRT) revealed more than 27 crores DK being incurred in 2016-2017. An efficient allocation of city buses to depots (ACBD) not only reduces DK but also reduces CCBO. The problem of minimizing DK is addressed widely. However, since every bus has a different mileage per unit of fuel, minimizing DK cost (DKC) is more appropriate, which has not been considered in India. Hence, this study considers this issue. Since ACBD can be viewed as a special type of transportation problem, 8 best initial basic feasible solution (IBFS) methods reported in the literature are considered to reduce CCBO. From the performance evaluation, the best-performing method is identified. As this is an ongoing Ph.D. dissertation work, many future research activities like developing and/or including a greater number of IBFS methods, considering depot operating costs/cost due to CO2 /etc. are in the pipeline as immediate future research issues.