A Simulated Annealing Algorithm for Solving the School Bus Routing Problem: A Case Study of Dar es Salaam

Abstract

School bus routing is one of major problems facing many schools because student’s transportation system needs to efficient, safe and reliable. Because of this, the school bus routing problem (SBRP) has continued to receive considerable attention in the literature over the years. In short, SBRP seeks to plan an efficient schedule for a fleet of school buses where each bus picks up students from various bus stops and delivers them to their designated school while satisfying various constraints such as the maximum capacity of a bus, the maximum transport cost, the maximum travelling time of students in buses, and the time window to reach at school. Since school bus routing problems differ from one school to another, this paper aims to developing Simulated Annealing (SA) heuristic algorithms for solving   formulating a mathematical model for solving the student bus routing problem. The objective of the model is to minimize amount of time students in the buses from the point where they pickup to the school. We illustrate the developed model using data from five schools located at Dar es salaam, Tanzania. We present a summary of results which indicates good performance of the model.

Keywords: bus stop, students, bus, simulated Annealing (SA), Objective function value, Current route, proposed route.