Automatic Generation of School Bus Routes in Los Angeles

Status

Complete

Project Timeline

July 1, 2018 - September 30, 2019

Principal Investigator

Areas of Expertise

Public Transit, Shared Mobility, & Active Transportation

Campus(es)

UCLA

Project Summary

Every regular school day, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) operates over 14,000 hours of service using 1,307 school buses to serve over 38,000 students, who attend more than 300 schools in more than 30 subdistricts, on 1,669 routes over a service area of about 750 square miles. Bus contractors own and operate another 700 school buses to provide service for LAUSD. LAUSD also provides service for midday, athletic events, after-school programs, and on weekends. The buses are subject to traffic conditions — operating both during peak traffic times and during non-peak traffic times — and to changing enrollment patterns. LA’s very large geographic area, as compared to other US cities, makes the problem particularly acute (and also scientifically interesting). The project team seeks to help the Student Transportation Operation of the LAUSD better match its capacity with demand. Specifically, UCLA seeks to answer the following stakeholder question: What is the best way to operate their bus service within regulatory and policy guidelines? The proposed project includes incorporation into traveling salesperson problems on networks of (1) dynamic route readjustment, as congestion and accidents affect delays; (2) novel types of constrained optimization (e.g., different types of buses for different types of special needs for students, as well as other constraints; and (3) multiplex network features by generalizing ideas from the new formalism of multilayer networks.