A new formulation and heuristics for some vehicle scheduling problems on a time-space network

The thesis proposes novel solution approaches to solve the vehicle scheduling problem (VSP) in transportation related businesses. The problem requires assigning a specified set of tasks to available vehicles in order to minimize the operational cost. The large-sized instances of the VSP are difficult to solve in given time. In the thesis, the VSPs in the recreational vehicle rental business and in public transit operations have been successfully solved. The approaches have been validated using real-life as well as difficult-to-solve theoretically constructed data. The proposed approaches outperform existing solution methods in terms of the solution time and the solution quality.