With the contribution of the LIFE programme of the European Union - LIFE14 ENV/GR/000611 and       the co-financing of Green Fund, Greece

Reduction of wasted time in Intercity buses using LIFE GreenYourMove rescheduling algorithm

The European Program LIFE GreenYourMove aims to develop a journey application that will encourage people to use public transportation for their commute, and at the same time to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. This journey application, which will provide users with the best routes of public transportation in a useful and fast way, includes a network of 3 European countries (Greece, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) and aims to reduce the production of greenhouse gas emissions and minimize the passenger commute time. To identify the best route, the app is using a combination of heuristic and analytical approaches, and during its development, a new gas emission calculation model was developed.

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The problem of transport timetables re-scheduling refers to the adjustment of the execution times of trips. The purpose of appropriate timetable scheduling lies on assessing robustness, i.e. creating a timetable in which small delays during everyday operations can be absorbed and therefore possible delays in the overall schedule can be limited. When creating a network transport schedule, a scheduler attempts to create appropriate departure times, taking into account the necessary frequency, the assignment of trips and the synchronization of arrivals. The widespread approach considers factors from passengers’ perspective, dealing with the minimization of travel times required. The initial timetables are re-examined periodically to correct inefficiencies and infeasibilities and to keep them updated according to demand.

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In LIFE GreenYourMove project, a re-scheduling problem was solved for the Greek, Czech and Slovak public transport network, concerning the re-arrangement of train and intercity bus services in such a way, so that the passengers of those trips and routes, would spend less time waiting at intermediate nodes of the networks between trips, when they have to use more than one transport mean. The result of the analysis of the network and the services is a proposed schedule which transport operators could adopt in order to provide better services to their customers.

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By adopting some of the proposed optimization of timetable changes in their itineraries, the Greek intercity bus public transport network and the Greek railway network achieved a reduction of 4.91% in their waiting time.

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LIFE GreenYourMove (GYM) is co-funded by the European Commission as part of the axis for the environment - LIFE14 ENV/GR/000611, the Green Fund, and the General Secretariat for Research and Technology. It is a cooperation of a total of 6 partners from Greece (University of Thessaly, AVMaps GIS S.A., TRAINOSE S.A., and EMISIA S.A), the Czech Republic (CHAPSspol. s.r.o.), and Slovakia (INROP), coordinated by the University of Thessaly.