EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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1356. An Integrated Approach to Electric Bus Timetabling and Scheduling for Sustainable Urban Mobility

Invited abstract in session WC-51: Timetabling 1, stream Public Transport Optimization.

Wednesday, 12:30-14:00
Room: M5 (building: 101)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Gajendra Nagar
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD)
2. Hemant Kumar Suman
Centre for Transportation System, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR)
3. Lakshay Lakshay
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University IIT (BHU)
4. Nomesh Bolia
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi

Abstract

Transportation is one of the major contributors to global carbon emissions. This makes it necessary to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources for a sustainable transportation system. Electric buses (EBs) play an important role in this transition because of their lower carbon emissions. But to integrate the EBs into the existing network, two main problems arise: timetabling and scheduling. These problems can be addressed either sequentially or in an integrated way. However, the sequential approach may produce a suboptimal bus schedule due to fixed timetable and operational constraints. Also, due to the fixed departure time, EBs miss their best sequence of trips, which could raise the further requirement for new buses. So, in order to develop an effective bus schedule, both timetabling and scheduling problems should be addressed simultaneously due to their interdependency. In response, this paper proposes an integrated method for solving the timetabling and scheduling problems. Initially, a mathematical model is developed to minimize overall costs, including bus procurement and charging expenses. The developed model uses service frequency as an input to generate a timetable and assign buses. Second, a heuristic algorithm is developed in order to produce the result for large instances. Later, we validated the methodology in Bangalore, India, using a realistic scenario to demonstrate its ability to assign EBs while also generating daily timetables.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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