Open Access

Ralf Borndörfer

• This cumulative thesis collects the following six papers for obtaining the habilitation at the Technische Universität Berlin, Fakultät II – Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften: (1) Set packing relaxations of some integer programs. (2) Combinatorial packing problems. (3) Decomposing matrices into blocks. (4) A bundle method for integrated multi-depot vehicle and duty scheduling in public transit. (5) Models for railway track allocation. (6) A column-generation approach to line planning in public transport. Some changes were made to the papers compared to the published versions. These pertain to layout unifications, i.e., common numbering, figure, table, and chapter head layout. There were no changes with respect to notation or symbols, but some typos have been eliminated, references updated, and some links and an index was added. The mathematical content is identical. The papers are about the optimization of public transportation systems, i.e., bus networks, railways, and airlines, and its mathematical foundations, i.e., the theory of packing problems. The papers discuss mathematical models, theoretical analyses, algorithmic approaches, and computational aspects of and to problems in this area. Papers 1, 2, and 3 are theoretical. They aim at establishing a theory of packing problems as a general framework that can be used to study traffic optimization problems. Indeed, traffic optimization problems can often be modelled as path packing, partitioning, or covering problems, which lead directly to set packing, partitioning, and covering models. Such models are used in papers 4, 5, and 6 to study a variety of problems concerning the planning of line systems, buses, trains, and crews. The common aim is always to exploit as many degrees of freedom as possible, both at the level of the individual problems by using large-scale integer programming techniques, as well as on a higher level by integrating hitherto separate steps in the planning process.