Real-world meeting points for shared demand-responsive transportation systems

Abstract

While shared demand-responsive transportation (SDRT) systems mostly operate on a door-to-door policy, the usage of meeting points for customer pick-up and drop-off can offer several benefits, such as fewer stops and less total travelled kilometers. Moreover, real-world meeting points offer a possibility to select only feasible and well-defined locations where safe boarding and alighting are possible. This paper investigates the impact of using such meeting points for the SDRT problem with meeting points (SDRT-MP). A three-step procedure is applied to solve the SDRT-MP. Firstly, the customers are clustered into temporary and spatially similar groups and then the alternative meeting points, fo..