Smart Algorithmic Change Requires a Collaborative Political Process

After the Boston public school system decided in 2017 to redesign the city’s school bus schedule using algorithms, it held an open transportation challenge inviting computer scientists to develop the new system. The “Quantum Team” from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Operations Research Center won both phases of the challenge. Professor Dimitris Bertsimas, co-director of the Operations Research Center, along with PhD students Arthur Delarue and Sébastien Martin, would build the model. With respect to the bus routing, they solved what is known as the “traveling salesman problem” of mapping the most efficient way to cover a route without doubling back, while also accounting for road surfaces, traffic, and many other variables. Using public data and data from the school district, they designed an algorithm to reduce the number and footprint of bus routes, reconfigure bus stops, maximize the number of passengers on each bus, and…

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