Buses scheduling - every day

Question

I have the following problem and I need some ideas to handle it:

1. I have a number of buses (approx 150) owned by individuals Every individual drives his own bus (or is responsible for the bus driver) So I don't need to care about bus drivers because buses and drivers are the same thing.

2. The above buses have to "execute/perform" bus routes on a daily base (approx 200).

3. A bus can do ONE or more routes daily

4. A bus can WORK normally 5 days a week and a certain amount of hours in a day (or month)

5. I have to find a FAIR way to distribute the daily routes every 3 months. Fair means that at the END of a 3 month period all the buses must have done the same number of kilometers (each bus route is assigned a fixed number of Kilometers)

6. I can't do the scheduling, at the begining, for the WHOLE 3 month period, because "special things" happen each day. Like a bus has a problem, a driver has a problem and so on.. This means that I do TODAY the NEXT DAY Schedule.

Any Ideas?

Answer 1

OptaPlanner (java, open source) has been used for such problems succesfully. Even if you don't use java, the idea's behind it could serve you well too in any language:

• 1-4: basic constraints, nothing special
• 5: Fairness constraint, see this video
• 6: Continuous planning, see this video