Two strategies for real time empty vehicle redistribution for the Personal Rapid Transit system

Abstract

A Personal Rapid Transit system is a public transportation mean that uses small, computer guided vehicles running on dedicated guideways for moving passengers to their desired destination. Vehicles in this system move only ondemand of passengers. Consequently, the system results on a high level of empty vehicle displacement. In this paper, we focus on minimizing empty vehicles displacement for the Personal Rapid Transit system. For that purpose, we propose two different dynamic online strategies that help the system to decide when and where to move empty vehicles. A case study is shown and used in order to test the validity and efficiency of our two strategies.