Optimizing Demand-Responsive Transit Service Considering Modular Vehicle Technology

Intelligence and flexibility provide a new direction for the development of public transport. Demand-responsive transit is recognized as an effective transportation mode, offering more flexible service than traditional bus transit. Recently, emergence of modular vehicle (MV) technology offers a novel idea for adjusting the bus capacity according to increasing/decreasing modular pods, which can satisfy passengers’ diverse demands. Hence, this study proposes a mixed integer non-linear model which aims to optimize the demand-responsive bus routing and bus capacity jointly based on MV technology. The objective is to minimize bus operation cost and passengers’ travel time cost. This model can be solved with off-the-shelf commercial solvers. A comparative analysis shows that the proposed model takes less total cost than other alternative models including the fixed-capacity shuttle bus system (FCSBS) and the passenger car system (PCS) through a numerical example. The proposed methodology is of great significance for the future of public transportation.