The real-time dynamic online feeder service with a maximum headway at mandatory stops

Abstract

On the one hand, fully flexible demand-responsive feeder services efficiently tailor their service to passengers' needs. Traditional services, on the other hand, offer predictability and easier cost control. This paper considers a semi-flexible feeder service that combines positive characteristics of both traditional and fully flexible services. There are two types of bus stops in this service. Mandatory bus stops have a maximum allowable headway for bus departures. Optional stops are only visited when there is demand for transportation nearby. When new passenger requests arrive, the performance of this feeder service is optimised in real time. A metaheuristic with two phases is developed to optimise the service. The dynamic optimisation method is compared to a model that optimises the service when all requests are known beforehand. The results show that the dynamic method has an average gap of 6.5% with respect to the static model and an average acceptance rate of 95.1%. A case study in the city of Antwerp shows that, when compared to existing transit options in the region, this feeder service can increase the service quality by 31.6% when enough resources are available.