A Novel Evolutionary Neural Network-based Approach for Online Bus Scheduling

Bus scheduling is vital to ensure service quality and save operational costs. Current studies typically consider the problem as an optimization problem and solve it using exact or heuristic approaches. In this paper, we consider the problem as a sequential decision-making problem and propose an Evolutionary Neural Network-based Approach (ENNA) for it. A neural network is used to make a decision at each departure time in the bus timetable. It selects which bus should depart at that specific time. By this means, a complete bus scheduling scheme is generated by a series of decisions made by the neural network. The structure and weights of the neural network are optimized by a genetic algorithm. To meet the real-world operational needs of bus duty types and improve bus utilization, we design a bus duty type transition rule that dynamically decides the duty type of buses. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed ENNA outperforms manual scheduling schemes and can generate bus scheduling schemes with fewer buses.