Operation strategy analysis for the passenger and freight shared transportation system
摘要
Flexible buses (FBs) offer efficient, customized alternatives to fixed-route buses and taxis. By integrating freight transport, the benefits of the FB system can be further enhanced. This study investigates an innovative mechanism to simultaneously accommodate both passenger and freight transport demands using a ride-sharing and demand-responsive model. A customized heuristic algorithm is developed, incorporating a vector clustering method, a matching technique, and parallel computation. The results of benchmark experiments show that the system generates a daily revenue of 130,437.7 CNY served by 119 FBs, and saves 28,856 minutes in vehicle travel time, proving the benefit of the sharing mode. The detour and response time of passengers are 14.9 and 4.8 minutes demonstrating high service quality. The analysis of system performance demonstrated that faster response times led to a reduction in social benefits but an increase in income for drivers and service efficiency.