School Bus Routing in Rural School Districts

Sam R. Thangiah (), Adel Fergany, Bryan Wilson, Anthony Pitluga and William Mennell
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Sam R. Thangiah: Slippery Rock University
Adel Fergany: Slippery Rock University
Bryan Wilson: Slippery Rock University
Anthony Pitluga: Slippery Rock University
William Mennell: University of Maryland

A chapter in Computer-aided Systems in Public Transport, 2008, pp 209-232 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has the nation’s largest rural population and the Commonwealth plays an important role in providing transportation for students to travel to their respective schools. State and local governments reimburse school districts for student transportation costs in Pennsylvania. Effective policies for governing the transportation of students can result in large cost savings for the respective governments and reduced travel time for the students. This paper presents heuristics to solve a complex rural school bus routing problem using digitized road networks that can lead to cost savings for both State and local governments. The school bus routing problem addressed and solved in this paper is a mixed-fleet, multi-depot, site-dependent, split-delivery problem with side constraints. Computation of real road distances for the rural school district between pickup points, depots and schools, consisting of 4200 road segments, was done using digitized road networks obtained from the U. S. Census Bureau. Heuristic algorithms were designed and implemented to solve a school bus routing problem with real life data obtained from a rural school district. Feasible solutions to the complex rural school bus routing problem, consisting of 13 depots, 5 schools, 71 pickup points and 583 students, were obtained in less than 10 minutes of CPU time.

Keywords: School District; Road Segment; Vehicle Rout Problem; Rural School; Total Travel Time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-73312-6_11

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