Urban car sharing: an overview of relocation strategies

Abstract

Traditional car sharing systems are round trip shared vehicle systems and require advance reservations. The advances of GPS, communication techniques and vehicle automation allow us to improve car-sharing systems and to provide users with greater flexibility. As it concerns reservation, new car sharing systems offer users open-ended reservation and/or instant access. As it concerns the trip topology, new car sharing systems are multiple station shared vehicle systems (MSSVS). Round trips still occur in this type of system; however there are a large number of one-way trips made between the multiple stations. Operating an MSSVS is much more difficult than operating a round trip shared vehicle system. The problem is that the system can quickly become imbalanced with respect to the number of vehicles at the multiple stations. A review of user-based and operator-based relocation strategies is provided in the paper, as well as some details about some new possible car sharing systems, where vehicles are fully automated and can be accessed from any point within the intervention area.