Integrated electric vehicle and crew scheduling problem

In the public bus transport sector, the use of electric vehicles is expected to rise due to its environmental benefits. However, electric vehicles are less flexible than conventional diesel buses due to their limited driving range and longer recharging times. Therefore, scheduling electric vehicles adds further operational difficulties. Additionally, various labor regulations challenge public transport operators to find a cost-efficient crew schedule. Vehicle and crew scheduling are two problems that essentially define the cost of operations. Traditionally, these two problems are solved sequentially as it is too complex to solve them in one integrated step. In this talk, the integrated electric vehicle and crew scheduling problem (E-VCSP) is introduced. Given a set of timetabled trips and recharging stations, the E-VCSP is concerned with finding a vehicle and crew schedule that covers the timetabled trips and satisfies operational constraints such as limited driving range of electric vehicles and labor regulations while minimizing total operational cost. An adaptive large neighborhood search that utilizes branch-and-price heuristics is proposed to tackle the E-VCSP. The proposed method is tested on real-life instances from public transport operators in Denmark and Sweden.   

About Shyam SUndar:

Shyam Sundar is an industrial PhD student at Technical University of Denmark and his PhD project is carried out in cooperation with a company, QAMPO ApS, in Denmark. His research focuses on applying operations research methods to solve large complex vehicle and crew scheduling problems in the public bus transport sector. For his master thesis, he worked on optimizing the schedules of railway infrastructure projects for the Danish rail network using operations research methods.