Public bus network design: narrowing the gap between theory and practice

Appropriate public transport systems are crucial in modern cities. Given the high costs that they represent and the impact they have on people’s lives, effective tools are required to support their design. The Transit Network Design and Frequency Setting problem (TNDFSP) has been extensively studied in operations research. However, due to the complexity of the problem and the many assumptions that are made in theory, still no optimization techniques are available to address this problem in practice. 
The main objective of this project is to develop new solutions algorithms to tackle much more realistic versions of the TNDFSP. In particular, I aim to solve the problem with a more detailed infrastructure network, an accurate representation of the demand and considering the elasticity of the demand. These extensions of the TNDFSP impose many challenges and will require fundamentally different algorithms. Additionally, I will propose a new set of realistic benchmark instances, based on real data from different transit operators. The resulting algorithms will be suitable to assist transit planners in practice. In the future, these algorithms can be translated into user-friendly software helping to improve transit systems around the world.