Mixed-fleet ferry routing and scheduling

Abstract

This study formulates a mixed-fleet ferry routing and scheduling model while considering passengers' choices for differential services. Ferry services with different operation characteristics and passengers with different preferred arrival time-windows are considered in the model. The logit model is applied to determine passengers' service choices. The formulation then determines the best mixed-fleet operating strategy, including interlining schemes, so as to minimize the objective function that combines both the operator and passengers' performance measures. Mathematically, this mixed-fleet routing and scheduling problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program. This study then develops an iterative heuristic algorithm to solve this problem. The results show that the algorithm could improve the operations of the system given different initial points. Nevertheless, finding the global optimal solution could be difficult due to the inherent non-convex nature of the problem. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.