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Computer-aided Systems in Public Transport pp 209–232Cite as

School Bus Routing in Rural School Districts

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems ((LNE,volume 600))

Abstract

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has the nation’s largest rural population and the Commonwealth plays an important role in providing transportation for students to travel to their respective schools. State and local governments reimburse school districts for student transportation costs in Pennsylvania. Effective policies for governing the transportation of students can result in large cost savings for the respective governments and reduced travel time for the students. This paper presents heuristics to solve a complex rural school bus routing problem using digitized road networks that can lead to cost savings for both State and local governments. The school bus routing problem addressed and solved in this paper is a mixed-fleet, multi-depot, site-dependent, split-delivery problem with side constraints. Computation of real road distances for the rural school district between pickup points, depots and schools, consisting of 4200 road segments, was done using digitized road networks obtained from the U. S. Census Bureau. Heuristic algorithms were designed and implemented to solve a school bus routing problem with real life data obtained from a rural school district. Feasible solutions to the complex rural school bus routing problem, consisting of 13 depots, 5 schools, 71 pickup points and 583 students, were obtained in less than 10 minutes of CPU time.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, USA

    Sam R. Thangiah, Adel Fergany, Bryan Wilson & Anthony Pitluga

  2. Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

    William Mennell

Authors
  1. Sam R. Thangiah
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  2. Adel Fergany
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  3. Bryan Wilson
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  4. Anthony Pitluga
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  5. William Mennell
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Arizona, 1209 E. Second Street, Tucson, AZ, 85721-0072, USA

    Mark Hickman

  2. Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering, University of Arizona, 1127 E. James E. Rogers Way, Tucson, AZ, 85721-0020, USA

    Pitu Mirchandani

  3. Institute of Information Systems, Department of Business and Economics, University of Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 5, 20146, Hamburg, Germany

    Stefan Voß

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Thangiah, S.R., Fergany, A., Wilson, B., Pitluga, A., Mennell, W. (2008). School Bus Routing in Rural School Districts. In: Hickman, M., Mirchandani, P., Voß, S. (eds) Computer-aided Systems in Public Transport. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, vol 600. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73312-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73312-6_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73311-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73312-6

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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