A computing tool for the programming of urban bus routes

• Grant number: 00/13210-3
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Innovative Research in Small Business - PIPE
• Start date: September 01, 2001
• End date: February 28, 2002
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computational Mathematics
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Antônio Vanini
• Grantee: Fernando Antônio Vanini
• Company: Fernando Antonio Vanini - ME
• City: Paulínia

Abstract

The project’s objective is to develop the prototype of a computing tool capable of automatically generating trip programs for an urban bus route. In order to solve this problem, it begins with a curve describing the hourly demand by passengers along the route and of a grouping of operational restrictions, producing a timetable, as well as the scale of complete service of the buses and drivers/conductors that are going to operate the urban routes in question. Some software for this task is already available on the market, but the solutions found by them generally end up demanding a considerable quantity of human interventions in order to make them operational or, even worse, the computer generated solution fails to achieve significant cost reductions when compared to manually obtained solutions. This can be explained by the fact that these products reproduce the same patterns already employed in the manual construction of a travel program. The person normally involved in the development of these products has considerable experience in the operation of bus companies or in the municipal organs of transport management. However, they have little or no knowledge of computing and the development of mathematical models that can be used to tackle this problem. Thus, given the complexity of the problem, those responsible for the production of the stops fail to extract, in real time, solutions as competitive as those which could be obtained through mathematical modeling, followed by an automatic generation of produced stops using a computer tool implemented with a mathematical model base. (AU)