A routing and scheduling framework incorporating real-time adjustments for inter-city bus carriers under stochastic travel times and demands

Stochastic bus travel times and varying passenger demand often occur in actual inter-city bus operations and such variation can reduce the performance of preplanned bus routes/schedules. In past research, stochastic disturbances have often been handled in the planning and the real-time stages separately, meaning that the interrelationship between these two stages, as affected by such disturbances, has been neglected. In this research, we develop a framework embedded in a solution process designed to help inter-city bus carriers plan bus routes/schedules that are sensitive to stochastic bus travel times and varying passenger demand. The test results, related to a major Taiwan inter-city bus operation, show that the proposed framework performs better than the current carrier timetables and the traditional deterministic model.