Determining the Viability of a Demand-Responsive Transport System under Varying Demand Scenarios

Collaborative transportation has been proposed as a potential solution to decrease congestion, reduce environmental effects of transport, and provide transportation options to those with no or restricted travel options. One such system is demand-responsive transport, in which passengers share a vehicle, usually a bus, but can be picked up or dropped off at a passenger-specified location and time. However, as these systems are expensive to implement and require long trials in order to gain traction, effective simulation is required in order to explore their viability before implementation. Although previous work has concentrated on the number of trip requests, the spatial distribution of these requests has not been considered. This paper explores four spatially-varying demand patterns -- random, a many-to-one scenario, all short distance trips, all long distance trips -- using a simulation of an ad-hoc demand-responsive bus system. It is shown that along with the number of trip requests and the requested trip distances, the spatial distribution of passengers does indeed have an effect on the level of service.