Route optimization of Muafakat Johor bus service

Abstract

Muafakat Johor Bus Service is a service provided by the Johor State Government for free to all citizens. The aim of this service is to reduce the cost of living and also to facilitate and improve the quality of public transport services to citizens in the routes that have been identified. Therefore, any reduction in the operation cost of this bus service will be of help to the government. On the other hand, in order to improve the quality of public transport services, the bus is expected to arrive at the respective stops at the time specified by the schedule. It is seen that one way of achieving these goals is through the route design of the bus service. Thus, in this study, Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window (VRPTW) is used to model the route of Muafakat Johor bus service under consideration. The model was solved by using LINGO which is an efficient software for solving optimization models. The optimal route is obtained with the optimal number of buses is two. By considering the time window constraint, the current practice of one bus covering all the stops is found to be infeasible.