1 optimization problems
If you are a municipal transit authority or a small-metro public-transport operator running 30-200 bus lines, you have to answer three questions at once: which lines stay open, how many minutes apart each line runs in the morning and evening peaks, and how many buses from your fixed fleet go to each line. If peak frequency is too low, passengers wait more than 15 minutes, cannot board a full bus and shift to private cars; if off-peak frequency is too high, you drive empty buses around and burn taxpayer money. A planning desk that sets the line-stop-frequency matrix by intuition cannot put numbers on the trade-off between passenger satisfaction and operating cost, and investment decisions (add a new line, or boost the frequency of an existing one) drift to gut feel as well. This page is for transit teams that want to redesign the network and the frequency with data as new neighbourhoods come online.