The flexible airport bus and last-mile ride-sharing problem: Math-heuristic and metaheuristic approaches

Authors

Ping He
Jian Gang Jin
Frederik Schulte

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2024

Subject Area

mode - bus, place - asia, place - airport, planning - integration, planning - methods, planning - service quality

Keywords

Flexible airport bus, last-mile ride-sharing

Abstract

Airport buses play a crucial role in addressing the last-mile problem of air travel, especially in cities and countries lacking inner-city rail transit systems. Nevertheless, airport buses are currently witnessing a decline in ridership due to drawbacks such as long departure intervals, inflexible stops, and considerable distances between stops. Consequently, delivering high-quality airport bus services has become a pressing concern for public transport operators. Motivated by new flexible buses and ride-sharing services, this paper explores a flexible airport bus service that integrates ride-sharing services for passengers traveling from bus stops to their destinations. This problem entails integrated decisions involving bus stop selection, passenger assignment to drop-off bus stops, as well as bus and ride-sharing routing. Accordingly, this problem presents more challenges in decision-making than traditional flexible bus or ride-sharing routing problems. We first develop an arc-based mixed-integer linear programming model. Subsequently, we design a double decomposition math-heuristic algorithm that builds upon logic-based Benders decomposition and column generation algorithms to obtain a near-optimal solution within practical computation time limits for practical-scale instances. Additionally, we implement an adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm to evaluate the solution quality of this math-heuristic algorithm and to solve large-scale instances. To validate the effectiveness of both the model and the algorithms, we conduct numerical experiments using instances derived from Shenzhen airport bus lines. The experimental results demonstrate that the flexible service mode offers significant advantages in reducing both passenger ride time and vehicle mileage over traditional airport bus or taxi modes.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Elsevier, copyright remains with them.

Comments

Transportation Research Part E Home Page:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13665545

Recommended Citation

He, P., Jin, J. G., & Schulte, F. (2024). The flexible airport bus and last-mile ride-sharing problem: Math-heuristic and metaheuristic approaches. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 184, 103489.