A new mathematical programming model for transit timetable synchronisation

Schedule synchronisation has always been a big concern for public transport planners due to its direct effect on the passengers transferring between transit lines. Schedule synchronisation is a complex optimisation problem and consists in setting the timetables by which the total transfer waiting time in a transit network becomes minimised. Although a wealth of research has been dedicated to developing efficient algorithms for this problem, its mathematical formulation has not received sufficient attention in the literature. In this paper, the variation of transfer waiting time is formulated and a new mathematical programming model is proposed for the schedule synchronisation problem. This model aims to minimise the total transfer waiting time incurred by all transferring passenger while preventing long waiting times at all transfer points. In this paper, the proposed model is also applied to a simple transit network using Genetic Algorithm in order to reveal the capabilities of the model in reducing the transfer waiting time in public transport systems.