Multi-period Planning in Public Transportation: Line Planning and Fleet Allocation

Güvenç Şahin,  Sabancı University & Zuse Institute Berlin

Abstract

Urban transportation systems are subject to a high level of variation and fluctuation in demand over the day. When this variation and fluctuation are observed in both time and space, it is crucial to develop line plans that are responsive to demand. A multi-period line planning approach that considers a changing demand during a finite planning horizon is proposed. When such systems are also subject to limitations of resources, a dynamic transfer of resources from one line to another throughout the planning horizon should also be considered. A mathematical modelling framework is developed to solve the line planning problem with a cost-oriented approach considering transfer/allocation of vehicles. We use real-life public transportation network data and both real-life and real-life-based randomly generated demand data in our computational results. We analyze whether or not multi-period solutions outperform single period solutions in terms of feasibility and relevant costs. The importance of demand variation on multi-period solutions is investigated. We evaluate the impact of resource transfer constraints on the effectiveness of solutions. We also study the effect of period lengths along with the problem parameters that are significant for and sensitive to the optimality of solutions. Alternative solution methods for large-scale instances and generalization of the modelling framework to other problem domains are briefly discussed.

Short Bio

Güvenç Şahin has a PhD in Operations Research from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida. He is a professor of Industrial Engineering at Sabanci University where he joined in 2006 right after earning his PhD. He is also currently a research fellow at the Zuse Institute Berlin. He is a recipient of the Young Scientist award of Science Academy Turkey in 2017 and an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow since 2018 for his work at the Zuse Institute Berlin. He works on modeling and solving problems in transportation and logistics, network design and facility location, and collusive decision making in electricity markets.

Venue

Friday, May 7, 2021, 4.00 pm - Zoom Meeting 

English

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