Public transport is one of the most disrupted sectors of the COVID-19 pandemic with reported ridership drops up to 90% in majorly affected countries. As many government authorities strive to partially resume activities, public transport operators are in an urgent need for models that can evaluate the impact of different social distancing policies on operational and passenger-related costs. In this study, we introduce a mixed-integer quadratic programming model for the redesign of public transport services considering the operational, passenger, and revenue loss-related costs by evaluating the effects of different social distancing policies. Our model is applied at the metro network of Washington DC and provides optimal redistribution of vehicles across lines for different social distancing scenarios. This model can be used as a decision support tool by other policymakers and public transport operators that are in need of evaluating the costs related to the implementation of different social distancing policies.

公共交通是 COVID-19 大流行中受干扰最严重的部门之一，据报道，在主要受影响的国家/地区，客运量下降了 90%。由于许多政府当局努力部分恢复活动，公共交通运营商迫切需要能够评估不同社会疏远政策对运营和乘客相关成本的影响的模型。在这项研究中，我们通过评估不同的社会疏远政策的影响，引入混合整数二次规划模型来重新设计公共交通服务，考虑运营、乘客和收入损失相关的成本。我们的模型应用于华盛顿特区的地铁网络，并针对不同的社交距离场景提供跨线路的车辆最佳重新分配。