Development and application of a metaheuristic optimization procedure integrated with simulation for a bus transit system

A metaheuristic optimization procedure integrated with discrete event simulation (DES) is proposed in this work. The procedure was applied to the operation of the bus fleet owned by Al-Oroba Transportation Company in Amman, Jordan. The fleet operation was modeled and simulated using ARENA® software. Two key performance indicators (KPIs) were defined to validate the developed model and characterize system performance; namely the bus activity ratio (BAR) and the average waiting time in the queue (AWT). Improvement in system performance was achieved by optimizing the number of buses and ticket cashiers in the system subject to some bound constraints. Aiming at maximizing the net profit, an optimal solution was reached at a total number of buses of 28 and one ticket cashier in the system. Simulation values of BAR and AWT parameters were improved maximum by +88.9% and -35.6%, respectively, compared to the actual system.