Integrated and Dynamic Vehicle and Crew Scheduling

textabstractDue to increased competition in the public transport market and the pressure on governments to cut expenses, increasing attention has been paid to cost reductions in public transportation. Since the main resources used in public transportation are vehicles and crews, producing efficient vehicle and crew schedules is an important issue. A sequential approach, i.e. vehicle scheduling followed by crew scheduling, does not guarantee an overall optimal solution. Therefore, integrated approaches are considered in this thesis. For different cases, mathematical models are presented and several algorithms are developed to solve these models. Computational tests demonstrate the quality of these algorithms. In addition to cost reductions, the reliability of the public transport services for the passengers is an important issue. The disadvantage of the traditional, static approach is that, when a delay occurs, the next trip performed by that vehicle and/or driver will often start late. Therefore, new delays can occur which may have a similar `snowball’ effect. A dynamic approach has been developed to prevent such an effect