Global optimization for bus line timetable setting problem

Abstract

This paper defines bus timetables setting problem during each time period divided in terms of passenger flow intensity; it is supposed that passengers evenly arrive and bus runs are set evenly; the problem is to determine bus runs assignment in each time period to minimize the total waiting time of passengers on platforms if the number of the total runs is known. For such a multistage decision problem, this paper designed a dynamic programming algorithm to solve it. Global optimization procedures using dynamic programming are developed. A numerical example about bus runs assignment optimization of a single line is given to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methodology, showing that optimizing buses' departure time using dynamic programming can save computational time and find the global optimal solution. © 2014 Qun Chen.