Customized bus passenger boarding and deboarding planning optimization model with the least number of contacts between passengers during COVID-19

Feng Chen; Haorong Peng; Wenlong Ding; Xiaoxiang Ma; Daizhong Tang; Yipeng Ye

doi:10.1016/j.physa.2021.126244

Customized bus passenger boarding and deboarding planning optimization model with the least number of contacts between passengers during COVID-19

Physica A. 2021 Nov 15:582:126244. doi: 10.1016/j.physa.2021.126244. Epub 2021 Jul 8.

Authors

Feng Chen¹, Haorong Peng¹, Wenlong Ding¹, Xiaoxiang Ma¹, Daizhong Tang², Yipeng Ye³

Affiliations

¹ The Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering, Ministry of Education, Tongji University, Shanghai, 201804, China.
² School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China.
³ School of Economics & Management, Wuyi University, Guangdong, 529020, China.

Abstract

The COVID-19 epidemic has had a major impact on people's normal travel. Optimizing the control of the number of passengers boarding and deboarding the customized bus (CB) at CB stops can reduce the contact between passengers in the course of travel, which is meaningful for COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. In this paper, a dynamic programming model based on nonlinear integer programming (NIP) is established to study the problem of boarding and alighting planning at various CB stops under the influence of COVID-19. Using Gurobi 9.1.1 solver, the optimal plan for passengers boarding and deboarding CB buses could be obtained. Besides, the mathematical model established in this paper can obtain the minimum value of the total number of contacts between passengers during travel under different CB numbers. It is found that the model solution results eventually form a Pareto frontier. When the number of CB buses increases, the total number of contacts between passengers will decrease This study has positive significance for ensuring the normal travel of passengers during the COVID-19 epidemic, and provides useful references for the studies about the planning of the customized bus.

Keywords: COVID-19; Customized bus; Dynamic programming model; Nonlinear integer programming.