In public transport, blocking is the practice of dividing the parts of a scheduled route among vehicles and drivers. It follows the process of dividing the route into trips. In blocking, these trips are pieced together into blocks that are relatively contiguous in space and time. The goal of blocking is to optimize the schedule such that:
Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN), and computer networks, such as the Internet.
Service management in the manufacturing context, is integrated into supply chain management as the intersection between the actual sales and the customer point of view. The aim of high-performance service management is to optimize the service-intensive supply chains, which are usually more complex than the typical finished-goods supply chain. Most service-intensive supply chains require larger inventories and tighter integration with field service and third parties. They also must accommodate inconsistent and uncertain demand by establishing more advanced information and product flows. Moreover, all processes must be coordinated across numerous service locations with large numbers of parts and multiple levels in the supply chain.
Field service management (FSM) refers to the management of a company's resources employed at or en route to the property of clients, rather than on company property. Examples include locating vehicles, managing worker activity, scheduling and dispatching work, ensuring driver safety, and integrating the management of such activities with inventory, billing, accounting, and other back-office systems. FSM most commonly refers to companies that need to manage installation, service, or repairs of systems or equipment. It can also refer to software and cloud-based platforms that aid in field service management.
The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a combinatorial optimization and integer programming problem which asks "What is the optimal set of routes for a fleet of vehicles to traverse in order to deliver to a given set of customers?" It generalises the travelling salesman problem (TSP). It first appeared in a paper by George Dantzig and John Ramser in 1959, in which the first algorithmic approach was written and was applied to petrol deliveries. Often, the context is that of delivering goods located at a central depot to customers who have placed orders for such goods. The objective of the VRP is to minimize the total route cost. In 1964, Clarke and Wright improved on Dantzig and Ramser's approach using an effective greedy algorithm called the savings algorithm.
StarTran is the public transit bus system in Lincoln, Nebraska, United States. It operates 18 regular bus routes and a downtown circulator service on weekdays from 5:15 a.m. to 9:55 p.m. and Saturdays from 5:55 a.m. to 7:05 p.m. There is no service on Sundays. There is a special Handi-Van transportation service for those who have a disability that prevents them from riding a regular city bus.
Saskatoon Transit is the public transport arm of the City of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. It operates a fleet of diesel buses. A total of 23 bus routes serve every area of the city, carrying approximately 11 million passengers in 2008. Saskatoon Transit is a member of the Canadian Urban Transit Association. The major bus terminal is located Downtown.
In scheduled transportation, a layover is a point where a vehicle stops, with passengers possibly changing vehicles. In public transit, this typically takes a few minutes at a trip terminal. For air travel, where layovers are longer, passengers will exit the vehicle and wait in the terminal, often to board another vehicle traveling elsewhere.
The Ride is the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's ADA paratransit program for people with physical, mental or cognitive disabilities that make it difficult or impossible to ride the MBTA's fixed-route bus, subway, and trolley system. The Ride provides door-to-door service, from vehicle to door. Using wheelchair accessible vans and four door sedans (cars), drivers assist passengers from door to vehicle, take them directly to their destinations, and assist them from vehicle to door. The Ride satisfies requirements under the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act for transit systems to provide services for those who cannot ride the fixed-route system. The service began in April 1977 with two vehicles. In 2023, The Ride provided 1.5 million rides to 30,000 riders with a $130 million budget.
In public transportation, schedule adherence or on-time performance refers to the level of success of the service remaining on the published schedule. On time performance, sometimes referred to as on time running, is normally expressed as a percentage, with a higher percentage meaning more vehicles are on time. The level of on time performance for many transport systems is a very important measure of the effectiveness of the system.
A journey planner, trip planner, or route planner is a specialized search engine used to find an optimal means of travelling between two or more given locations, sometimes using more than one transport mode. Searches may be optimized on different criteria, for example fastest, shortest, fewest changes, cheapest. They may be constrained, for example, to leave or arrive at a certain time, to avoid certain waypoints, etc. A single journey may use a sequence of several modes of transport, meaning the system may know about public transport services as well as transport networks for private transportation. Trip planning or journey planning is sometimes distinguished from route planning, which is typically thought of as using private modes of transportation such as cycling, driving, or walking, normally using a single mode at a time. Trip or journey planning, in contrast, would make use of at least one public transport mode which operates according to published schedules; given that public transport services only depart at specific times, an algorithm must therefore not only find a path to a destination, but seek to optimize it so as to minimize the waiting time incurred for each leg. In European Standards such as Transmodel, trip planning is used specifically to describe the planning of a route for a passenger, to avoid confusion with the completely separate process of planning the operational journeys to be made by public transport vehicles on which such trips are made.
Dead mileage, dead running, light running, empty cars or deadheading in public transport and empty leg in air charter is when a revenue-gaining vehicle operates without carrying or accepting passengers, such as when coming from a garage to begin its first trip of the day. Similar terms in the UK include empty coaching stock (ECS) move and dead in tow (DIT).
A through service is a concept of passenger transport that involves a vehicle travelling between lines, networks or operators on a regularly specified schedule, on which the passenger can remain on board without alighting. It may be in form of either the following:
Dynamic Infrastructure is an information technology concept related to the design of data centers, whereby the underlying hardware and software can respond dynamically and more efficiently to changing levels of demand. In other words, data center assets such as storage and processing power can be provisioned to meet surges in user's needs. The concept has also been referred to as Infrastructure 2.0 and Next Generation Data Center.
Crew scheduling is the process of assigning crews to operate transportation systems, such as rail lines or airlines.
SISCOG is a software company that provides decision support systems for resource planning and management in transportation companies, with special experience in the field of railways.
Mountain Metropolitan Transit is the public transportation operator for the metro area of Colorado Springs, Colorado, providing service to downtown Colorado Springs and surrounding areas within city limits and to the city of Manitou Springs, Widefield and Security. It has 27 local routes. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 2,991,300, or about 9,200 per weekday as of the second quarter of 2024.
A vehicle tracking system combines the use of automatic vehicle location in individual vehicles with software that collects these fleet data for a comprehensive picture of vehicle locations. Modern vehicle tracking systems commonly use GPS or GLONASS technology for locating the vehicle, but other types of automatic vehicle location technology can also be used. Vehicle information can be viewed on electronic maps via the Internet or specialized software. Urban public transit authorities are an increasingly common user of vehicle tracking systems, particularly in large cities.
GTFS or the General Transit Feed Specification defines a common data format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS contains only static or scheduled information about public transport services, and is sometimes known as GTFS Static or GTFS Schedule to distinguish it from the GTFS Realtime extension, which defines how information on the realtime status of services can be shared.
In public transport, a short turn, short working or turn-back is a service on a bus route or rail line that do not operate along the full length of the route. Short turn trips are often scheduled and published in a timetable, but they may also be unscheduled, for multiple reasons.
Autonomous mobility on demand (AMoD) is a service consisting of a fleet of autonomous vehicles used for one-way passenger mobility. An AMoD fleet operates in a specific and limited environment, such as a city or a rural area.