MIXED-INTEGER PROGRAMMING BASED HEURISTIC FOR BUS ROUTING PROBLEM ARISING IN DOHA

Abstract

School bus operation in Qatar is a very important element in the school system of Qatar. Studies conducted by Qatar Transportation and Traffic safety center shows that more than half of the students use the buses to get to their school, and so using the buses without proper study and planning will increase dramatically the number of buses used and put more pressure on the roads especially during rush hours Besides the economic effect generated from the bus numbers, the parents and the students are experiencing major problems with the bus routes that force the students to spend a lot of time on their trips to and from schools. Also, the large number of buses used by the school in Qatar contributes to heavy traffic volumes, which increase the time spent by students on the buses Our study aims to improve the bus system by proper planning and optimization to reach the most economical and social efficient solution considering the future growth and increasing number of students The main objectives of this study are to produce better school bus routing planning, finding the optimized bus numbers, minimizing the time spent by students on the buses, and optimizing the bus route schedule to avoid the rush hours, taking into consideration that the bus can have more than one trip, the possibility of having different types of buses with different capacities for better optimization of operation cost and separation of gender