A matheuristic for transfer synchronization through integrated timetabling and vehicle scheduling

•The paper studies the integration of timetabling and vehicle scheduling with the aim to reduce passenger associated costs and operating costs, thereby contributing to the current trend of integrating planning phases in public transport.•It proposes a matheuristic approach based on a new mathematical for-mulation that allows for a far wider set of timetable modifications than considered in previous research. The matheuristic is able tond better feasible solutions faster than a commercial solver.•It includes a real-life case study for the express bus network in the Greater Copenhagen area, for which the proposed matheuristic cannd provably good solutions in reasonable amounts of computational time.