Optimal variable vehicle scheduling strategy for a network of electric buses with fast opportunity charging

Abstract

The introduction of battery-powered electric buses (EBs) presents promising prospects for greener and more sustainable public transit. However, recharging activities of EBs to extend the total daily operation range, enabled by fast opportunity charging approach, create a significant challenge for attaining better, or equivalent, operational efficiency than conventional diesel buses. We propose a novel variable vehicle scheduling strategy of a transit EB network with multiple depots to meet this challenge by right shifting trip departure times. A numerical example is used as an expository device to illustrate the variable EB-scheduling methodology, followed by an empirical case study in the city of Dalian, China. The results show how the optimised variable EB scheduling strategy can reduce the impact of recharging activities on the operation’s efficiency. It has been found that by inserting a small schedule delay it is possible to save operational costs, especially through a reduction of the fleet size.

KEYWORDS:

• Electric buses
• variable vehicle scheduling
• fast opportunity charging
• schedule delays

Acknowledgements

The authors feel greatly indebted to the anonymous referees for their very helpful suggestions and comments on the earlier versions of the paper. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the funding body.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71801027] and  the Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Project (No.22YJC630124).