Modeling and Solving a Bus University Routing Problem

This research concerns the study of the University Bus Routing Problem (UBRP) in Bejaia city, in order to satisfy the student demand on one hand, and minimizes the buses traffic time on the other hand. The whole problem is then to find an efficient bus transportation plan satisfying the underlined objectives. After a first step which consists of collecting data from both the responsible authority of this transportation system and the students, a model based on a particular Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is built. This model involves classical constraints of capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows, and some others specific to the treated problem. To solve the obtained model, two variants of metaheuristic based on bee colony behaviour are developed. The obtained results highlight new policy for the management of the university bus transport system and bring more efficient transportation plans than the actual ones.