Public Transportation Systems employ a variety of vehicles (buses, trams, metros, trains, …) to satisfy the mobility demands of large numbers of users. These systems are rather complex to design, manage and operate, requiring to plan and maintain a service that achieves high levels of users’ satisfaction while operating the vehicles and their drivers in an economically and ecologically efficient way. All this gives rise to complex optimization problems spanning the design of the system (lines and timetables), to the scheduling of actual vehicles trips and drivers’ working duties, to the on-line management of disruptions in the services caused by several factors (weather, strikes, …).
CommaLAB has been working on the subject for more than 30 years, having contributed to the foundation and development of MAIOR, the Italian leader in Decision Support Systems for Public Transportation Systems operators with an ever growing international presence. Several research and industrial projects have been conducted along the years, either directly funded by MAIOR or obtaining funding by entities such as the Tuscany Region (e.g., the project “TICAMPS: Advanced ICT Technologies for Sustainable Public Transport“) and the European Union (e.g., the ITN networks MINO: Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Optimization and MINOA: Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Optimization Applications“).