A scalable heuristic algorithm for demand responsive transportation for first mile transit

Abstract

First/last mile transit using public transport has consistently been a bottleneck for commuters due to the relatively higher time spent in these legs when compared to the overall journey. Recently, demand responsive transportation(DRT) services have been proposed for the first/last mile transit. However, in contrast to the requirements of a public transportation system, existing DRT services either match only a few passengers to a vehicle or require advance booking. Hence, in this paper we propose a DRT system, specifically for the First mile transit, by matching multiple passengers to a vehicle in real-time. We first model the problem as a convergent graph and obtain an exact solution. Next, a scalable heuristic algorithm has been proposed that not only provides near optimal solution, but also does that in real-time (≈ms) as opposed to minutes/hours taken for the exact solution.