On the Dispatching Problem

Most often, space is the scarce resource in Bus Depots located in congested urban areas: vehicles arriving at the end of their trips are packed together in a rather small space. That implies that, when a vehicle has to leave to start a new trip, most often, other vehicles have to be moved to clear the way. Here a new model, based on ``Min Non Crossing Matching'' and ``Generalized Assignment'', is presented to allocate parking spaces to vehicles in a Depot in order to minimize the shunting cost. The results obtained applying our approach to a real life case are discussed.