An Optimal Bus Dispatching Model Based on
African Buffalo Algorithm
Zhang Longfei
School of Automation, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
Email: returnhhh@gmail.com
Abstract—Bus is an indispensable product of a city, and
its operation reflects the management level of a city. In bus
dispatching, most schemes only meet the demand of passenger
flow, without considering the interests of the bus company and
the satisfaction of passengers. In actual conditions, the two are
often contradictory. How to balance the two interest has become a
topic worth discussing. In this paper, we propose a bus scheduling
optimization model that takes the interests of the bus company
and the satisfaction of passengers as the dual goals. The bus
departure interval is used as the decision variable, and the
African buffalo optimization (ABO) algorithm is used to solve
the problem. The results show that the bus departure interval
varies with passenger flow. In practical applications, the future
passenger flow can be predicted based on historical data, and
then the model mentioned in the paper can be used to solve the
optimal bus dispatch plan.
Index Terms—bus dispatching, optimization model, African
buffalo algorithm, dual goals
I. I NTRODUCTION
Bus is an indispensable public product in a city, it is
mainly to provide services for citizens to travel. On the one
hand, the target of bus services is the public rather than
specific individuals, that is, it considers the needs of most
people, not the needs of individual people. On the other hand,
public transportation generally does not aim at profit, but it
is not completely free, and its operation also requires costs.
Therefore, the operation of buses must take into account the
two goals of ‘alleviating urban traffic congestion as much as
possible’ and ‘making the public as satisfied as possible’. On
this basis, bus station layout, route planning, model equipment,
fare setting, departure frequency, and vehicle scheduling must
be designed and adjusted according to specific attributes and
goals. This is a very complex system problem, reflecting the
management level of a modern city. Because of the impor-
tance, complexity and difficulty of this issue, from traditional
‘traffic engineering’ to today’s ‘smart city’, it has attracted
a lot of theoretical and applied research for a long time,
and has accumulated rich research results and a series of
design standards and specifications . Jean-Mark Rousseau [1]
constructed an optimized model of ”real-time release schedul-
ing”, and proposed a heuristic algorithm to solve the model.
Soeldner [2] proposed a strategy for the implementation of
scheduling control for public transportation, with the purpose
of compiling a scheduled schedule to minimize the cost of
passenger travel. The scheduling control strategy includes
station parking, empty cars, express cars, and shuttle cars.
However, in bus dispatching, in addition to meeting basic
needs, passenger satisfaction is also an aspect worthy of
attention. Specifically, in bus dispatching, if the departure
time interval is large, the profit of the bus company will
increase, but the waiting time of passengers will increase and
their satisfaction will decrease. Therefore, when conducting
bus dispatch, in addition to meeting basic needs, passenger
satisfaction is also worth considering. In this paper, a bus
dispatch optimization model with the dual goals of bus com-
pany profit and passenger satisfaction is proposed. Specifically,
the bus operating time is divided into scheduling periods. In
different scheduling periods, the passenger flow is different.
For example, there are more people flow in the morning peak
and evening peak of a day, and the departure time interval
during this time period should be shortened. Therefore, the
public transportation scheduling problem can be regarded as
an optimization problem with the departure time interval in
different scheduling periods as the decision variable.
The African buffalo optimization algorithm (ABO) is used
to solve the optimization problem. The ABO algorithm is a
new heuristic algorithm proposed by Julius Odili et al. [3] in
2015. The algorithm is inspired by observing a type of African
wild cattle called the African buffalo, which searches for
pasture in the African forest [3]. African Buffalo Optimization
is a user-friendly, robust, effective, efficient, and easy-to-
implement algorithm. ABO solves the problem of premature
convergence or stagnation by determining the current position
relative to the best previous position of the animal and the
current best position of the buffalo and regularly updating the
position of each buffalo. Compared with traditional heuristic
algorithms such as Ant Colony Optimization [4], Artificial
Bee Colony [5], Genetic Algorithm [6], Particle Swarm Op-
timization [7], it has been proved that the ABO algorithm is
superior to them in terms of searching precision, convergence
rate, stability and the avoidance of local optimal value [8].
II. M ETHODOLOGY
A. Assumption
In order to clarify the issues to be discussed, we made the
following assumptions:
1) The bus line under consideration is determined, which
means the length, station distribution, one-way time
consumption and operating cost are also determined. In
addition, it is assumed that the fare is a fixed value,
 that is, passenger differences and discounts are not Our goal is to make the bus profit as large as possible and
considered; passenger satisfaction as high as possible. In other words, the
2) Taking the departure interval on one side of the route value of formula 4 is as large as possible, and the value of
as the research object, ignoring the difference in total formula 2 is as small as possible. Combining the two, the
passenger flow in the same time period on both sides of objective function can be written as :
the route;
3) The time between the arrival of two vehicles, the time min − α · r + β · sat (3)
of passengers arriving at each station is approximately In the above formula, α and β represent the weight of r and
uniformly distributed, and it does not take into account sat respectively. In general, we set α = β = 0.5, cause bus
that passengers leave due to excessive waiting time; company’s profit and passenger satisfaction are seen as equally
4) Bus operating hours are from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. important. While in some certain circumstances, their value
B. Model can be changed.
Some main symbolic assumptions appearing in the model In actual conditions, if the value of r(t) is too high, the bus
are shown in table I. will be overloaded; if the value of r(t) is too low, the loss
of the bus will be too high. Therefore, the upper and lower
TABLE I: The model nomenclature bounds of r(t) need to be determined :
c
Notations Defination Lb ≤ N (t) · p − ≤ Up (4)
T (t)
N (t) Passenger flow changes over time
In actual bus dispatching, the dispatching cycle is generally
p ticket price discrete, so assuming that the dispatching cycle is 1 hour, the
c One-way operating cost
above formula can be rewritten as :
21 21
T (t) Departure time interval
X c X T (t)
min − α · [N (t) · p − ]+β·v· [N (t) · ]
t=6
T (t) t=6
2
v Average time value of passengers

Lb lower bounds c
s.t. Lb ≤ N (t) · p − ≤ Up
T (t)
Ub upper bounds (5)
α, β weight
III. A FRICAN B UFFALO O PTIMIZATION

Assuming r is the profit per unit time, time and departure A. The flow of ABO algorithm
interval are both continuous quantities, and the departure time 1) The ABO algorithm first initialize the population. In this
interval at a certain moment is h(t), the rate of change of the case, since the bus operating time is from 6 am to 9 pm,
flow of people over time is N (t). Since N (t) · p is the total the solution dimension is 16. The algorithm randomly
income, and T 1(t) is the number of buses issued in a dispatch assigns a position to each buffalo in the solution space.
period, then the profit per trip is: 2) Then, find the individual in the population with highest
c fitness and each individual’s best position.
r(t) = N (t) · p −
T (t) 3) After that, update each buffalo’s exploitation(‘maaa’)
the total profit is : using Equation 6.
21 m0k = mk + lp 1 (bg − wk ) + lp 2 (bp.k − wk ) (6)
Z
c
r= [N (t) · p − ]dt (1)
6 T (t)
In the above formula, lp1 and lp2 are learning parame-
To simplify the model, assuming that the arrival time of ters which helps to bias search. bg is the best location
passengers is uniformly distributed, then the average waiting so far found in the population, bp.k is so far the best
time per passenger is T 2(t) , the total waiting time in a unit time location of the the kth buffalo. mk represents the kth
is buffalo’s present exploition location, m0k represents a
T (t)
sat(t) = N (t) · new exploition location of the kth buffalo. wk represents
2 the kth buffalo’s present exploration location.
In order to express the waiting time of passengers in the same 4) In the next step, firstly perform boundary judgment, if it
form as Equation 4. assuming that the time value of each exceeds the boundary value, replace it with the boundary
passenger is v, then for passengers, their satisfaction can be value, then if the buffalo’s new location is better(judg
expressed as by fitness, the smaller, the better), change the current
Z 21 location into the new one.
T (t)
sat = v · N (t) · dt (2) 5) Moreover, updata bg and bg.k.
6 2
 Fig. 3: interval of departure

pm respectively, mainly because this is the time period when

people go to work and leave work.
B. Parameter setting
Considering the actual situation of Guangzhou Public Trans-
port, the main parameter settings in the model are shown in
table II.
TABLE II: Parameter setting

Parameter Defination Value

p ticket price 2

c One-way operating cost 200

Fig. 1: ABO flowchart v Average time value of passengers 27.47

Lb Lower bounds 400

Ub Upper bounds 800

lp1 learning parameter 0.7

lp2 learning parameter 0.5

Note: All parameters are set in international standard
units, and the price unit is yuan.

Fig. 2: Passenger Flow from 6.am to 9.pm
6) Finally, the algorithm updata the location of the buffalo
using Equation 7.
(wk + mk )
wk0 = (7)
rand
Here, wk0 represents the ‘waaa’ call to explore to a new
location and rand is a random number between 0 to 1.
The flowchart of the ABO algorithm is shown in figure 1.
IV. A NALYSIS O F C ASES
A. Data
The data comes from the passenger flow statistics of a
certain workday and time period of a bus route in Guangzhou
[9]. As can be seen from figure 2, there are mainly two
peaks in the flow of people in a day, centered at 8 am and 6
C. Results
Based on the model and ABO algorithm mentioned in the
paper, using matlab to simulate and finally get the optimal
departure time interval with 1 hour as the scheduling period,
as shown in figure 3.
As mentioned earlier, the goal of optimization is to make
the profit of the bus company as large as possible and the
waiting time for passengers as little as possible.
As shown in figure 4 and figure 5, during the peak period,
due to the rapid increase in passenger flow, bus profits and
passenger waiting time will increase and decrease accordingly,
but overall, the two are maintained in a relatively balanced
state, which is in line with expectations.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, taking into account both the interests of the bus
company and the satisfaction of passengers, a bus dispatching
model with the weighted sum of the two as the goal was
established. And the newer African buffalo algorithm was used
 [7] Angeline P. Evolutionary optimization versus particle swarm optimiza-
tion: Philosophy and performance differences. Evolutionary Programming
VII. Springer, Berlin. 1998;601–610.
[8] Obaiahnahatti, B.Gireesha. (2018). A Comparative Performance Evalua-
tion of Swarm Intelligence Techniques. 14-20.
[9] https://tianchi.aliyun.com/competition/entrance/231514/information.

Fig. 4: profit

Fig. 5: waiting time

to solve the problem, which improved the speed and accuracy

of the solution.
However, there are still some areas that need improvement.
Scheduling time interval is a little bit big, considering further
reducing the scheduling interval, so that the objective function
value of the scheduling model is further reduced. The model
only gives the results corresponding to working days, and
further considering adding the effect of holidays to the model.
In practical applications, according to historical passenger
flow data, predict the future passenger flow using exponential
smoothing, neural network and other prediction methods, and
then use the model mentioned in the paper to solve the optimal
bus dispatch plan.

R EFERENCES
[1] Li Y., Rousseau JM., Wu F. (1992) Real-Time Scheduling on a Transit Bus
Route. In: Desrochers M., Rousseau JM. (eds) Computer-Aided Transit
Scheduling. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems,
vol 386. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-
85968-7 15
[2] Eberlein X.J., Wilson N.H.M., Bernstein D. (1999) Modeling Real-
Time Control Strategies In Public Transit Operations. In: Wilson N.H.M.
(eds) Computer-Aided Transit Scheduling. Lecture Notes in Economics
and Mathematical Systems, vol 471. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85970-0 16
[3] Odili, Julius & Mohmad Kahar, Mohd Nizam. (2015). Numerical Func-
tion Optimization Solutions Using the African Buffalo Optimization
Algorithm (ABO). British Journal of Mathematics & Computer Science.
10. 1-12. 10.9734/BJMCS/2015/17145.
[4] Reinelt G. TSPLIB - A travelling salesman problem library. ORSA
Journal on Computing. 1991;3(4) Fall:376-384
[5] Dorigo M, Stützle Ant T. Colony optimization. Cambridge: The MIT
Press; 1995.
[6] Bin Y, Zhong. Zhen Y, Baozhen Y. An improved ant colony opti-
mization for vehicle routing. European Journal of Operational Research.
2009;196:171–176.