A heuristic algorithm for school bus routing with bus stop selection

Abstract

In this paper a heuristic algorithm is proposed for a school bus routing problem which is formulated as a capacitated and time-constrained open vehicle routing problem with a homogeneous fleet and single loads. The algorithm determines the selection of bus stops from a set of potential stops, the assignment of students to the selected bus stops, and the routes along the selected bus stops. Its goals are to minimize the number of buses used, the total route journey time and the student walking distances. It also aims at balancing route journey times between buses. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated on a set of twenty real-world problem instances and compared against solutions achieved by a mixed integer programming model. Reported results indicate that the heuristic algorithm finds high-quality solutions in very short amounts of computational time.