Glossary · approach
Student Bus Stop Assignment
Sub-problem within the School Bus Routing Problem (SBRP) that assigns each student to a specific bus stop, under capacity, walking distance and route balance constraints.
Student-to-Stop AssignmentStop Assignment
Student Bus Stop Assignment is one of the sub-problems of SBRP (third in the Park and Kim 2010 classification). It decides, for each student, the specific bus stop at which the student is picked up. Mode distinction matters: in **door-to-door** mode every home is a potential stop — suitable for special-needs students, small settlements, or high-service tiers. In **walk-to-stop** mode neighboring homes are clustered and directed to a shared stop — this is the city default. The assignment decision is not isolated: it ties to stop selection (no stop, no assignment) and to routing (the number of students per stop must not exceed vehicle capacity). Constraints: maximum walking distance home-to-stop (typically 300-500 m primary, 500-800 m high school), stop capacity (how many students can a single stop hold), pedestrian safety (no arterial-road crossing), sibling pairing (two siblings pick-up at the same stop). Equity metrics are essential: walking distance should be balanced across neighborhoods (variance, worst-case distance, or Gini coefficient). Schittekat et al. (2013) develop a metaheuristic that solves stop selection and assignment jointly.
Örnek
In a neighborhood with 80 homes and 3 candidate stops, the assignment starts by picking the nearest stop for each home; but if a stop attracts 50 students while the bus capacity is 35, the surplus is redirected to the second-nearest stop (capacity constraint).