Optimizing Dead Mileage in Urban Bus Routes

Abstract

The problem of determining an optimal number of buses to be parked overnight at respective garages and an optimal schedule to take buses from the garages to the starting points of their respective routes is considered. Capacities of the respective garages and the number of buses required at the starting points of the respective routes are given. The primary objective to to minimize the cumulative distance traveled by all buses from the garages to the starting points of their routes and the secondary objective is to minimize the maximum distance among the distances traveled by individual buses from the garages to the starting points of their respective routes. A numerical method is developed to obtain the optimal solution of this two‐objective problem.