Associate Professor Twan Dollevoet (Econometric Institute, Erasmus School of Economics) and co-authors former Master student Marelot H. de Vos and former PhD candidate Rolf N. van Lieshout have been honoured with the Transportation Science Paper of the Year Award of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). The authors are presented the award in the area Modes & Industries, for their paper “Electric Vehicle Scheduling in Public Transit with Capacitated Charging Stations”.
Electric vehicle scheduling in public transit with capacitated charging stations In their paper “Electric Vehicle Scheduling in Public Transit with Capacitated Charging Stations,” Marelot H. de Vos, Rolf N. van Lieshout, and Twan Dollevoet present an innovative approach to one of the most pressing optimisation problems in sustainable transit planning: how to schedule electric buses efficiently while accounting for both partial charging and limited charging station capacity.
Performance and Results
The paper is based on the master’s thesis of De Vos. The approach that she developed uses a discretisation of time and battery charge. It was tested using real-world data from the “Gooi en Vechtstreek bus concession” in the Netherlands, comprising 816 scheduled trips across five cities. When applied to the full-scale instance, the diving heuristic reached a 2.7% optimality gap within seven hours of computation time, demonstrating its effectiveness for large, real-world networks.
Looking Ahead
The study opens several promising directions for future work. Potential extensions include developing more advanced acceleration techniques, integrating driver scheduling to jointly optimise work and charging breaks, and exploring dynamic discretisation methods that adaptively refine the representation of time and battery charge during optimisation. This research provides a powerful and flexible framework for public transit operators, bridging the gap between academic models and practical planning tools. By combining methodological innovation with real-world applicability, De Vos, Van Lieshout, and Dollevoet offer an important step forward in the sustainable electrification of public transport systems.
Recognising excellence in transportation research
The award recognises outstanding contributions published in Transportation Science, a leading bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). The journal is internationally recognised for publishing research that applies operations research techniques to critical challenges across transportation sectors, including air travel, rail transport, commuter systems, and vehicular traffic management.
- Associate professor
- More information
For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Media & Public Relations Officer at Erasmus School of Economics: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, +316 53 641 846.
