A Dynamic Approach to Vehicle Scheduling
23 Pages Posted: 26 Aug 2006
Date Written: March 2001 7,
Abstract
This paper presents a dynamic approach to the vehicle scheduling problem. We discuss the potential benefit of our approach compared to the traditional one, where the vehicle scheduling problem is solved only once for a whole period and the travel times are assumed to be fixed. In our dynamic approach, we solve a sequence of optimization problems, where we take into account different scenarios for future travel times. Because in the multiple-depot case we cannot solve the problem exactly within reasonable computation time, we use a "cluster-reschedule" heuristic where we first assign trips to depots by solving the static problem and then solve dynamic single-depot problems. We use new mathematical formulations of these problems that allow a fast solution by standard optimization software. We report on the results of a computational study with real life data, in which we compare different variants of our approach and perform a sensitivity analysis with respect to deviations of the actual travel times from the estimated ones.
Keywords: vehicle scheduling, stochastic programming, dynamic scheduling, stochastic traveltimes, public transport
JEL Classification: M, M11, R4, C69
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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