An Integrated Approach for the Design of Demand Responsive Transportation Services

Providing quality public transportation can be extremely expensive when demand is low, variable and unpredictable. Demand Responsive Transportation (DRT) systems try to address these issues with routes and frequencies that may vary according to observed demand. The design and operation of DRTs involve multiple criteria and have a combinatorial nature that prevents the use of traditional optimization methods. We have developed an innovative Decision Support System (DSS) integrating simulation and optimization, to help design and operate DRT services, minimizing operating costs and maximizing the service quality. Experiments inspired in real problems have shown the potential of this DSS.

[1]  J. K. Lenstra,et al.  Complexity of vehicle routing and scheduling problems , 1981, Networks.

[2]  John D. Nelson,et al.  Key lessons learned from recent experience with Flexible Transport Services , 2007 .

[3]  J. K. Lenstra,et al.  Local Search in Combinatorial Optimisation. , 1997 .

[4]  Francesco Paolo Deflorio.  Simulation of requests in demand responsive transport systems , 2011 .

[5]  Richard C. Larson,et al.  Urban Operations Research , 1981 .

[6]  Harilaos N. Psaraftis,et al.  Dynamic vehicle routing: Status and prospects , 1995, Ann. Oper. Res..

[7]  Kalyanmoy Deb,et al.  Multiobjective optimization , 1997 .

[8]  Gilbert Laporte,et al.  The dial-a-ride problem: models and algorithms , 2006, Ann. Oper. Res..

[9]  Eiichi Taniguchi,et al.  CITY LOGISTICS. NETWORK MODELLING AND INTELLIGENT TRANSPORT SYSTEMS , 2001 .

[10]  Harilaos N. Psaraftis,et al.  k-Interchange procedures for local search in a precedence-constrained routing problem , 1983 .

[11]  Allan Larsen,et al.  The Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem , 2000 .

[12]  Mauricio G. C. Resende,et al.  Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedures , 1995, J. Glob. Optim..

[13]  M. Resende,et al.  A probabilistic heuristic for a computationally difficult set covering problem , 1989 .

[14]  Marius M. Solomon,et al.  Classification Of Dynamic Vehicle Routing Systems , 2007 .

[15]  Gilbert Laporte,et al.  Quality of service in dial-a-ride operations , 2009, Comput. Ind. Eng..

[16]  George B. Dantzig,et al.  The Truck Dispatching Problem , 1959 .