School bus routing problem: Contemporary trends and research directions

Abstract The school bus routing problem (SBRP) is a challenging operations research problem that has been studied by researchers for almost 50 years. SBRP publications address one or more operational sub-problems, including: bus stop selection, bus route generation, bus route scheduling, school bell time adjustment, and strategic transportation policy issues. This paper reviews 64 new SBRP research publications and analyzes them by sub-problem type, problem characteristics and solution approach. The impact of key SBRP characteristics (number of schools, mixed load, fleet mix, service environment, objective and constraints) are discussed and the different solution approaches to the SBRP are summarized by sub-problem type and methodology. We found in recent years, SBRP researchers are examining more complex real-world problem settings, adopting both evolutionary-based and trajectory-based metaheuristic solution approaches, and considering ridership and travel time uncertainty. This review documents recent trends in SBRP research and highlights research gaps and promising opportunities for future SBRP research.

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