The Assignment of Bus-Drivers to Trips problem in a Spanish public transport company.

Abstract

This paper addresses a particular Bus Crew Scheduling problem (CSP) arises in a public transport company in Spain. Classical CSP problem tries to create a busdrivers schedules covering all the published bus schedule by the company. The problem posed does not require satisfying this restriction due to the lack of drivers. This relaxed restriction emerges in the time of Covid-19 from different reasons. For this reason, the need arises in the company for a tool that allows optimizing the daily work of the drivers. The function objective of the problem requires to service the greatest amount of passengers as is possible, instead the minimization of the cost schedule. We introduce the model and the strategies to solve it exactly: clustering, re-optimization, etc. Additionally, we propose a re-optimization model using prior feasible solutions to speed up the resolution of the problem. We describe the integration and practical use of the obtained solutions and its corresponding monitoring in the decision-making process of the company.