Multi-atomic Annealing Heuristic for the Dial-a-ride Problem

Dial-a-ride problem (DARP) deals with the transportation of users between pickup and drop-off locations associated with specified time windows. This paper proposes a novel algorithm called multi-atomic annealing (MATA) to solve the dial-a-ride problem. Two new local search operators (burn and reform), a new construction heuristic and two request sequencing mechanisms (Sorted_List and Random_List) are developed. Computational experiments conducted on various standard DARP benchmark instances prove that MATA is an expeditious meta-heuristic in contrast to other existing methods. In all experiments, MATA demonstrates the capability to obtain high quality solutions, faster convergence, and quicker attainment of a first feasible solution. It is observed that MATA attains a first feasible solution 29.8 to 65.1% faster, and obtains a final solution that is 3.9 to 5.2% better, when compared to other algorithms within 60 sec.