REVIEW OF BUS AND TRAIN DRIVER SCHEDULING APPROACHES

The bus and train driver scheduling problem involves finding the most efficient way of assigning notional drivers to the daily operations of a fleet of vehicles. The number of possible combinations for partitioning the vehicle work is usually astronomical. The problem is complicated by the fact that there are many restrictions on the driver duty generation and is known to be NP-hard. This paper retrospects the research to the problem and divides in chronological order the solution approaches into four groups: early heuristics, mathematical programming approaches, meta-heuristics and constraint programming approaches. In each of the groups, several representative approaches are reviewed while their weaknesses are pointed out and common characteristics are summarised as well. Considering options for future research, the paper finally gives a concluding comparison between the generate-and-select approach and the constructive approach to the driver scheduling problem.