No abstract

Highlights Anthropometry of children should be considered in virus control countermeasures. A bus monitor is necessary to ensure passenger compliance with countermeasures. Physical distancing on school buses may not be feasible on school buses. A systematic approach is necessary when implementing change to school bus cabins.

While the importance of physical (social) distancing in reducing the spread of COVID-19 has been welldocumented, implementing similar controls in public transit remains an open question. For instance, in the United States, guidance for maximum seating capacity in single-destination public transit settings, such as school buses, is only dependent on the physical distance between passengers. In our estimation, the available models/guidance are suboptimal/inefficient since they do not account for the possibility of passengers being from the same household. This paper discusses and addresses the aforementioned limitation through two types of physical distancing models. First, a mixed-integer programming model is used to assign passengers to seats based on the reported configuration of the vehicle and desired physical distancing requirement. In the second model, we present a heuristic that allows for household grouping. Through several illustrative scenarios, we show that seating assignments can be generated in near real-time, and the household grouping heuristic increases the capacity of the transit vehicles (e.g., airplanes, school buses, and trains) without increasing the risk of infection. A running application and its source code are available to the public to facilitate adoption and to encourage enhancements. INDEX TERMS Airplane boarding, COVID-19, mixed integer programming (MIP) model, operations research, prescriptive analytics, public transport, school bus seating.

No abstract

No abstract