A Real-Time Vehicle Routing Method with Diversion for Immediate Requests

Abstract

Real-time vehicle routing that can divert a vehicle away from its fixed route in response to a new customer request is beneficial to flexible routing for its efficiency in quick response and saving cost especially when the density of customer requests is low. In this paper, a real-time method for assigning immediate request, which allows diversion, is proposed. A multi-objective model is built for the real-time vehicle routing problem with immediate requests considering the cost, and passengers on bus and waiting at stops. An empirical quick response and local optimization approach is proposed, which makes trade off between the computation time and the solution quality. A numerical experiment based on the real-world case has been designed to test the effectiveness of the proposed method. Comparison on the methods with or without diversion demonstrates the potential savings can be obtained through the proposed approach. The method proposed also has potential application meaning for handle real-time vehicle routing in schools, tourist places, and manufactories logistics.