Installing an urban transport scheduling system

Abstract

Bus and driver scheduling methods developed by the authors and their associates form the basis of the leading British commercial scheduling system installed for many organizations throughout the 1980s. New research in the 1990s led to more advanced systems. This paper describes the transition from these research‐based systems which had been demonstrated to operating companies through to the implementation of a fully operational system for an urban bus company. After outlining the bases of the scheduling methodology, the paper works through the stages of demonstrating and developing a system to meet the real needs of a client while under considerable pressure of time. It is shown that substantial savings were achieved, and that a good scheduling system can assist in the evaluation of alternative operating arrangements. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Integrated bus transit scheduling for the Beijing bus group based on a unified mode of operation

“…BOOST, its successor, has been used in some feasibility studies involving bus companies in the United Kingdom and Brazil. Wren and Kwan (1999) report an application for one United Kingdom bus company, whose main depot in the city centre has been relocated to a new site. They satisfactorily used BOOST to re‐schedule their entire new operation.…”

A Flexible System for Scheduling Drivers

“…The above exercises, and some subsequent projects, were carried out by our in-house team on behalf of clients. The first application of the system in Reading [24], only three months after TRACS II had been ordered, resulted in an annual…”

It Contributions to Efficient Transport Management

“…The VAMPIRES algorithm is now incorporated in the BOOST bus-scheduling module, part of the Schedules Office comprehensive scheduling system. A recent application is described in [3].…”