A new model for the integrated vehicle‐crew‐rostering problem and a computational study on rosters

Operational planning within public transit companies has been extensively tackled but still remains a challenging area for operations research models and techniques. This phase of the planning process comprises vehicle‐scheduling, crew‐scheduling and rostering problems. In this paper, a new integer mathematical formulation to describe the integrated vehicle‐crew‐rostering problem is presented. The method proposed to obtain feasible solutions for this binary non‐linear multi‐objective optimization problem is a sequential algorithm considered within a preemptive goal programming framework that gives a higher priority to the integrated vehicle‐crew‐scheduling goal and a lower priority to the driver rostering goals. A heuristic approach is developed where the decision maker can choose from different vehicle‐crew schedules and rosters, while respecting as much as possible management’s interests and drivers’ preferences. An application to real data of a Portuguese bus company shows the influence of vehicle‐crew‐scheduling optimization on rostering solutions.