Optimization of Carsharing Fleet Placement in Round-Trip Carsharing Service

Boonyarit Changaival,Kittichai Lavangnananda,Dzmitry Kliazovich,Grégoire Danoy,Jedrzej Musial,Matthias Brust,Pascal Bouvry,Frédéric Guinand

doi:10.3390/app112311393

Abstract

In a round-trip carsharing system, stations must be located in such a way that allow for maximum user coverage with the least walking distance as well as offer certain degrees of flexibility for returning. Therefore, a balance must be stricken between these factors. Providing a satisfactory system can be translated into an optimization problem and belongs to an NP-hard class. In this article, a novel optimization model for the round-trip carsharing fleet placement problem, called Fleet Placement Problem (FPP), is proposed. The optimization in this work is multiobjective and its NP-hard nature is proven. Three different optimization algorithms: PolySCIP (exact method), heuristics, and NSGA-II (metaheuristic) are investigated. This work adopts three real instances for the study, instead of their abstracts where they are most commonly used. They are two instance:, in the city of Luxembourg (smaller and larger) and a much larger instance in the city of Munich. Results from each algorithm are validated and compared with solution from human experts. Superiority of the proposed FPP model over the traditional methods is also demonstrated.

Highlights

It is undeniable that efficient management of transportation has become one of the major problems in cities across the globe due to its impact on the environment and quality of life
This work proves that realistic Fleet Management Problem is an NP-hard problem, Apart from suggesting that exact and optimal solutions may not be realizable, it paves way to the application of heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms
This work proposed a novel methodology in optimizing fleet placement in station-based round-trip carsharing and suggests how such problems can be modeled

Summary

Introduction

It is undeniable that efficient management of transportation has become one of the major problems in cities across the globe due to its impact on the environment and quality of life. Its success can be seen in several countries, such as Germany, which has the biggest carsharing market in Europe with over 2 million registered users, 170 service providers, and over 16,000 vehicles available in 740 cities [1,2]. It has been highlighted that cars are used for transportation more than trains and planes in Germany and that carsharing positions itself is an intermediate mean to fill the gap between public transport and personal cars [4]. Another success was reported in the United Kingdom where the government provided support to extend the user base to

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