Abstract:
This study is focused on the scheduling of minibus (taxi) transport between the
City of Polokwane and Mankweng Township in the Limpopo Province of South
Africa. New formulations of integer programming for taxi timetabling
problems were presented. The problem is modeled as a single link transit. Hard
and soft constraints have been identified.
The main objective of the study is to design the best schedule that minimizes
the waiting time of passengers and provides better service to the public for
taxi transport on the aforementioned link.
In this study the proposed solution methods managed to produce a timetable
with a non-conflicting set of taxis and no consecutive assignment of one taxi
to the trips within a duration time (total time traveled on a return trip between
two locations). Local search algorithms such as the Genetic Algorithm are
used in the research, mainly due to its flexibility and power to produce the
best solution to the timetabling problems. The algorithm starts with a
population of a feasible search space. Two operators: mutations and
crossovers, were designed in such a way that they do not produce infeasible
offspring.
