A column generation approach for the driver scheduling problem with staff cars

Given a set of timetabled bus trips, transport companies are faced with the challenge finding feasible driver schedule that covers all trips and abides by various labor union regulations. The regulations primarily concerned providing sufficient breaks for drivers during day. Practical limitations in city network enforce to travel cars between stops have breaks. Transport limited number cars, known as staff which be returned their respective depots at end simultaneous scheduling is problem (DSPSC). It estimated DSPSC accounts 60% company’s operational expense, this paper proposes column generation approach attempts minimize expense. column-generation framework iterates master problem, subproblem generating variables car variables. related formulated resource constrained shortest path solved dynamic programming approach. Several heuristic branching strategies explored find integer solutions. proposed methodology tested on eight real-life instances from seven Northern European companies. A comparison state-of-the-art mixed (MIP) solver an adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) indicate provides improved solutions six average improvement 1.45%.