Research On Dispatching System Of Demand-Responsive Connector With On-Demand Stations

As an important supplement of conventional fixed-route public transit, flexible transit services draw more attention in low demand areas. Demand responsive connector is one of those flexible transit services that have already been operated as feeder transit in some cities out of China.This paper concentrates on the dispatching system of the demand-responsive connector system with on-demand stations. A two-staged model is proposed to minimize the system cost, considering both the service provider and riders, and two solution algorithms are proposed and compared for the routing model. A simulation experiment based on a real-life case study in Nanjing city is conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the vehicle routing model. The results indicate a better performance of the optimized algorithm and that the proposed vehicle dispatch modeling is sufficient for the daily operation of Demand-Responsive Connector with on-demand stations.The achivements of this paper is significant to the process of application of Demand-Responsive Connector with on-demand stations. The two-stage dispatching system and the routing program can help to motivate the application and development of flexible transit services in China.