Article ID: | iaor2003971 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 53 |
Issue: | 5 |
Start Page Number: | 552 |
End Page Number: | 558 |
Publication Date: | May 2002 |
Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society |
Authors: | Li L.Y.O., Fu Z. |
Keywords: | education, transportation: road, combinatorial analysis |
This paper describes a case study of the school bus routing problem. It is formulated as a multi-objective combinatorial optimisation problem. The objectives considered include minimising the total number of buses required, the total travel time spent by pupils at all pick-up points, which is what the school and parents are concerned with most, and the total bus travel time. It also aims at balancing the loads and travel times between buses. A heuristic algorithm for its solution is proposed. The algorithm has been programmed and run efficiently on a PC. Numerical results are reported using test data from a kindergarten in Hong Kong. It has shown to be effective with a saving of 29% in total travelling times when comparing to current practice.