Online bus-pooling service at the railway station for passengers and parcels sharing buses: A case in Dalian

Abstract

Taking a taxi at the railway station is difficult in many large Chinese cities, especially during the night. Passengers off trains always have carry-on luggage, which may affect the travel choices for the next trip. This study integrates the passenger and freight transportation at the railway station by bus-pooling service. A two-stage model with passenger incentive is built. In the first stage, passengers are matched in a fair way while in the second stage, parcels are inserted into the bus routes. An algorithm is designed to find the fair bus-pooling plan in which a large neighborhood search is tailored to generate group rides. To assess the performance of the proposed model and algorithm, cases are presented based on real-life taxi data related to Dalian North Railway Station. The results indicate that the fairness, waiting time of passengers, walking distance of recipients and time span have impacts on the matching rate. Relaxing the fairness constraint could improve the application of the fair bus-pooling in practice.