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On‐Line and Off‐Line Routing and Scheduling of Dial‐a‐Ride Paratransit Vehicles
Author(s) -
Fu Liping,
Teply Stan
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
computer‐aided civil and infrastructure engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.773
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1467-8667
pISSN - 1093-9687
DOI - 10.1111/0885-9507.00150
Subject(s) - paratransit , scheduling (production processes) , software , computer science , vehicle routing problem , heuristic , routing (electronic design automation) , real time computing , transport engineering , simulation , operations research , engineering , computer network , public transport , artificial intelligence , operations management , operating system
This article presents the general concepts, models, and computational techniques applied in a new dial‐a‐ride vehicle routing and scheduling system. The objective of this system is to improve the responsiveness, reliability, and productivity of dial‐a‐ride paratransit services. The developed software integrates dial‐a‐ride routing and scheduling principles and practical experience and explicitly considers travel time variability in urban roadway networks. Such extensive and complex integration has been made possible by improved data acquisition and processing capabilities of computer, telecommunications, and vehicle location technologies. Advanced computational methods applied in the system, such as the artificial neural network technique, which allows heuristic estimation of origin‐destination travel times in a dynamic and stochastic fashion, contribute to the processing speed required to respond expeditiously and efficiently to paratransit user requests. A real scheduling problem from the city of Edmonton, Alberta, where the system was tested, is used to illustrate the positive computational experience and the capability of the developed software to handle both off‐line and on‐line operations.