OPERATIONAL PLANNING AND OPTIMIZATION SYSTEMS IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT OPERATORS

Abstract

Public transport system consists of different components such as roads, vehicles, stops, facilities, driver personnel and passengers. It is necessary to do comprehensive plannings for each components of transportation system. Physical components such as roads, vehicles, facilities etc. are the main infrastructures required to realize public transport service and necessitate highest investments. Thus, planning must start already before infrastructure investments for a successful public transport system. This first step is described as transport planning. Secondly, timetable and operational planning must be performed in order to make optimum use of resources for a successful operation. This planning step to increase the performance and efficiency of operation is named as resource planning and optimization or operational planning and optimization. In this paper, a work for operational planning and optimization was carried out for various cities in Turkey. It was explained how operators can plan their vehicle and driver resources optimally by using planning and optimization software. Furthermore, many topics such as tracking vehicle maintenance intervals, maximization of driver satisfaction, informing passengers about planned departure times at stops, planning for extreme cases, decision making for right investments, integration with the fleet management and ticketing system are touched upon as well as the results were evaluated.