An Optimization-and-Simulation Framework for Redesigning University Campus Bus System with Social Distancing

Gongyu Chen, Xinyu Fei, Huiwen Jia, Xian Yu, Siqian Shen, “The University of Michigan Implements a Hub-and-Spoke Design to Accommodate Social Distancing in the Campus Bus System under COVID Restrictions”, INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, 52(6):539-552, 2023

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led to significant challenges for schools, workplaces and communities to return to operations during the pandemic, requiring policymakers to balance individuals’ safety and operational efficiency. In this paper, we present our work using mixed-integer programming and simulation for redesigning routes and bus schedules for University of Michigan (UM)’s campus bus system during the COVID-19 pandemic. We propose a hub-and-spoke design and utilize real data of student activities to identify hub locations and bus stops to be used in the new routes. Using the same total number of buses to operate, each new bus route has 50\% or fewer seats being used and takes maximumly 15 minutes, to reduce disease transmission through expiratory aerosol. We sample a variety of scenarios that cover variations of peak demand, social-distancing requirements, and break-down buses, to demonstrate the system resiliency of the new routes and schedules via simulation. The new bus routes are implemented and used by all UM campuses during the academic year 2020-2021, to ensure social distancing and short travel time. Our approach can be generalized to redesign public transit systems with social distancing requirement during the pandemic to reduce passengers’ infection risk.