A GENERAL FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING DRIVER SCHEDULES IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Abstract

A unified approach is presented as the principle for a potential framework for evaluating driver schedules in public transport. There are two reasons for the need for such a framework. On the one hand, constructing optimal driver schedules is a challenging problem, and practical solutions cannot be compared to the optimum, which brings about the need to analyse the results with respect to an appropriate estimated value. On the other hand, the specific constraints and rules in different countries and for different companies make it difficult to model solutions in a unified way. Our new approach provides a solution to the above problems by employing an efficient general methodology from both the data modelling and process modelling point of view. By introducing the concept of reducible working time, our approach gives a realistic evaluation framework with an efficient solution method. The applicability of our approach is demonstrated through real-world cases.

Keywords

• public transport
• driver scheduling
• evaluation framework
• working time estimation
• local public bus passenger transport