A hybrid algorithm for Urban transit schedule optimization

Designing reasonable departure schedule is the key step to realize the urban transit priority. It can not only reduce the operating cost of bus company, but also guarantee convenience for passengers. This paper estimates the travel time between bus stations based on the historical trajectory data of the bus, and then combines the number of passengers get on and off at each station to optimize the departure timetable. In addition, several constraints including actual travel time, limited capacity and arrival time distribution type are considered in the optimization models to effectively and comprehensively estimate the passenger waiting time. Finally, a hybrid algorithm combining Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing Algorithm (SAA) is proposed to search optimal solution in scheduling model. A case study is applied to testify the effectiveness of proposed models. In the experiments, we compare optimization results of proposed method to traditional genetic algorithms, and the results show the superiority and feasibility of the hybrid optimization approach.