The Traffic Police Location and Schedule Assignment Problem NICOLE ADLER a , ALFRED SHALOM HAKKERT b , TAL RAVIV c and MALI SHER a * a School of Business Administration, Hebrew University of Jerusalem–Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel b Ran Naor Foundation for the Advancement of Road Safety, Ramat HaSharon, Israel c Department of Industrial Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel ABSTRACT The traffic police routine patrol vehicle mission is to provide service to the public, primarily through enforcement of traffic laws and assistance to road users after accidents or other calls for service. An efficient traffic police location and schedule assignment (TPLSAP) across a road network ensures that the traffic police undertake their mission effectively. In the search for effective road network cover solutions, a multiple-objective linear program is developed in the first stage with three distinct objectives. The objective functions maximize the following: (1) traffic police presence and conspicuousness; (2) police presence at blackspots where frequent traffic offences occur; and (3) the time available for proactive work. In the second stage of the TPLSAP formulation, distance and time halo effect integer linear programs produce a detailed, daily shift schedule across the planning horizon. Consequently, we formulate a routine traffic police schedule–location and activity problem, which incorporates road safety recommendations drawn from the literature, police policy and operational constraints. Finally, we apply the formulation to a case study of the interurban road network in Northern Israel, which highlights potential improvements over the current schedules. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS: multiple-objective linear programming; road safety; traffic police 1. INTRODUCTION In light of the estimated 1.3 million annual road fatalities across the globe (WHO, 2012), road accidents are clearly a negative externality of the transportation system that requires a systematic approach to achieve a serious reduction. In the European Union, for example, fatalities decreased by 43% between 2001 and 2010, from 54 302 to 30 900 deaths (CARE, 2012), and an expected further decrease of 50% is forecast by the year 2020 (EU Road safety action programme 2011-2020 (EU website 2013). Elvik and Vaa (2004) argue that changes in vehicle engineering, improved infrastructure and efficient traffic police operations in combination contributed to the reduction in the number of accidents, casualties and fatalities. The traffic police are first and foremost part of the general police force, which provides assistance to the public with the aim of enhancing confidence and security and, as traffic police, enforces road safety regulations, deters traffic violations and prevents driving offences. Consequently, the police force serves the public in general and road users in particular. Measuring the quality of service is a challenging research theme and one of great practical importance to service providers. The first stage of a measurement system requires identifying the salient dimensions of quality for a given service. The second stage requires measuring each dimension and identifying its relative importance (Hensher et al., 2003). In this research, we analyse both stages in an attempt to provide a holistic approach to the design of a traffic police service. The traffic police force frequently separates their operations into subunits including routine patrol vehicles (RPVs), a special operations force and units responsible for automatic enforcement devices (i.e. red-light cameras and speed cameras). In this research, we focus on the schedules, locations and activities of the interurban traffic police RPVs because the highest rates of speeding offences and fatal road accidents are covered by these subunits. Their major tasks include maintaining police presence and conspicuousness, issuing traffic tickets and handling vehicle accidents and other calls for service (Nam and Mannering, 2000). Each RPV is located on an enforcement segment where the law is enforced by issuing traffic *Correspondence to: School of Business Administration, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus 91905, Israel. E-mail: mali_sher@yahoo.com Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 16 August 2012 Accepted 28 January 2014 JOURNAL OF MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS J. Multi-Crit. Decis. Anal. 21, 315–333 (2014) Published online 4 April 2014 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/mcda.1522