Track: Undergraduate Research Competition

Abstract

The paper discusses a practical School Bus Routing Problem (SBRP) considering interscholastic transport in university contexts. This study focuses on the incorporation of a mixed load composed of multiple schools, to emphasize the need to provide collaborative transportation SBRP solutions in university contexts. A Systematic Literature Review was developed with the purpose of exploring the mathematical optimization models that have been elaborated in the last decade, showing the research opportunities on mixed load situations. Henceforth, the paper presents a real case scenario in a Mexican city to highlight the need for a mathematical model that optimizes the transportation offer of two universities on a common urban zone, that can be replicable in similar conditions. This study exhibits the development of two of the SBRP subproblems: Bus Stop Selection (BSS) and Bus Route Generation (BRG), through the Operations Research Methodology, to construct a solution that maximizes coverage by sharing resources within schools. A sensitivity analysis that focuses on the demand, capacity and time windows variations is conducted to prove the robustness of the approach and to propose an optimal solution for the schools of the specific case.