The inter-university bus routing problem represents a practical extension of the mixed-load school bus routing problem (SBRP), in which students from multiple universities share transportation services through buses operating on common routes. This study introduces the inter-university bus routing problem as a novel application of the SBRP within a university setting, leveraging universities as living laboratories for testing smart transportation solutions. By optimizing the shared use of bus fleets across institutions, the proposed approach improves both service efficiency and operational effectiveness. Unlike conventional SBRPs, the inter-university context presents unique challenges, including different service coverage requirements and heterogeneous class schedules.The proposed problem is formulated as a mixed-load SBRP with a bi-objective optimization model that balances service coverage and fleet utilization. In the case study, computational experiments were conducted, supported by data-driven sensitivity analyses to calibrate the model parameters. Furthermore, a bus stop location problem was solved prior to the routing problem using a location-allocation-routing framework. Applied to a real-world case involving four campuses from two universities, the proposed model increased service coverage by 11%, reduced fleet size by 28%, and decreased the number of routes by 25%, demonstrating the operational benefits of sharing transportation services across higher education institutions.
