Highlights We design a novel operational flex-route transit service with CAVs. Bus platooning is introduced to ensure dynamic bus capacity. Bus route, departure and arrival time are jointly optimized. A two-stage solution framework is solved the model. The model improves service quality and operation cost than conventional bus.
Abstract With the advent of modular autonomous vehicles (MAVs), this paper presents a novel operational design for flex-route transit services to reduce operation costs of vehicles and improve the service quality of customers. The regime allows the simultaneous dispatch of a certain amount of MAVs from a bus terminal at a departure time. Each MAV is allowed to visit customers freely outside of checkpoints. Self-adaptive capacity and flexible service mode adapt time- and space-dependent demand characteristics. The presented operational design is formulated as a mixed-integer linear program that is NP-hard. A two-stage solution framework is developed to decompose the proposed mathematical programming cautiously. In the first stage, customized dynamic programming with valid cuts is designed to solve a bus scheduling problem efficiently. In the second stage, an effective and fast heuristic is proposed to solve a variant of the dial-a-ride problem and satisfy the technical requirements for developing on-line applications. Numerical examples and a case study show the effectiveness of the proposed design by comparing the flex-route transit services using traditional vehicles.
Improving flex-route transit services with modular autonomous vehicles
2021-04-04
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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