On-demand ridesharing with optimized pick-up and drop-off walking locations

Andres Fielbaum,Xiaoshan Bai,Javier Alonso-Mora

doi:10.1016/j.trc.2021.103061

Andres Fielbaum, Xiaoshan Bai + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2021.103061

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Abstract

On-demand systems in which passengers with similar routes can share a vehicle are expected to become a relevant part of future mobility, thanks to their flexibility and their potential impact on reducing congestion. Nevertheless, due to the long detours required by a door-to-door scheme, they induce extra costs to the users in terms of delay. In this paper, we face the design of such a system in which users might be requested online to walk towards/from nearby pick-up/drop-off points if this improves overall efficiency. We show theoretically that the general problem becomes more complex (as it contains two sub-problems that extend set-cover), analyze the trade-offs that emerge, and provide a general formulation and specific heuristics that are able to solve it over large instances. We test this formulation over a real dataset of Manhattan taxi trips (9970 requests during one hour), finding that (a) average walks of about one minute can reduce the number of rejections in more than 80% and Vehicles-Hour-Traveled in more than 10%, (b) users who depart or arrive at the most demanded areas are more likely to be required to walk, and (c) the performance improvement of the service is larger when the system receives more trip requests.

Highlights

Mobility on-demand (MoD) systems have started to change mobility systems worldwide, thanks to the ability of massive coordi nation between vehicles and users
A similar idea can be applied to a SMoD system, if the system decides for each user pick-up and drop-off (PUDO)
If no heuristics are used and enough computational resources and time are available, the method we propose in this paper is optimal for assignment problem (AP) as the one we take as a base, by Alonso-Mora et al (2017)

Summary

Introduction

Mobility on-demand (MoD) systems have started to change mobility systems worldwide, thanks to the ability of massive coordi nation between vehicles and users. Trip sharing induces extra costs to the users in terms of delay, because vehicles may need to make long detours to visit all the origins and destinations that they are serving (C ́ap and Alonso-Mora, 2018). Such a problem does not exist in traditional public transport systems (that are shared), in which passengers walk towards the vehicle’s route instead of proceeding the other way around. A similar idea can be applied to a SMoD system, if the system decides for each user pick-up and drop-off (PUDO)

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