Smart Mobility for Public Transportation Systems: Improved Bus Timetabling for Synchronizing Transfers

Providing an efficient public transportation system is a key issue to increase the livability and sustainability of modern cities. This article addresses the bus timetabling problem for enhancing multi-leg trips or transfers. For this purpose, a mixed-integer programming model is proposed, aimed at maximizing the amount of transfers while considering budgetary and quality of service constraints. The proposed model is evaluated on real scenarios from the case study of the public transportation system in Montevideo, Uruguay. Results indicate that the solutions of the proposed model outperforms the current timetable used in the city in terms of number of transfers, cost, and number of required buses.