Customized bus route design with pickup and delivery and time windows: Model, case study and comparative analysis

The customized bus (CB) is an emerging type of public transportation system, which not only provides a flexible and reliable demand-responsive service, but also reduces the usage of private car to alleviate traffic congestion in metropolitan cities. The customized bus route design problem (CBRDP) is a crucial procedure in the CB service system designing. In this work, we develop a new type of problem scenario: Multi-Trip Multi-Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows, to describe CBRDP by simultaneously optimizing the operating cost and passenger profit, where excess travel time is introduced to estimate passenger extra cost compared with taxi service, and each vehicle is allowed to perform multiple trips for operational cost savings. To solve this problem, a constructive two-stage heuristic algorithm is presented to obtain the Pareto solution. Taking a benchmark problem and Beijing commuting corridor as case studies, we calculate and compare the monetary and travel costs of CB with other travel modes, and quantitatively confirm that the CB can be a cost-effective choice for passengers.