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Title:

Sharing Is Caring: Dynamic Autonomous Vehicle Fleet Operations Under Demand Surges

Accession Number:

01660480

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

Given the emergence and growth of ridesourcing companies, the forthcoming introduction of fully- autonomous vehicles (AVs), and the projected positive impact of AVs on the growth of mobility services, this paper aims to analyze the operational efficiency of two on-demand AV-enabled mobility services (AVeMSs). Specifically, the study compares an AV-enabled shared-ride service, with an AV-enabled traditional ridesourcing (i.e. no shared-rides) service, in terms of handling demand surges, when fleet size is fixed. The authors hypothesize that shared-ride service will significantly outperform traditional ridesourcing service because as demand increases with shared-ride service, the number of feasible shared-ride opportunities increases, effectively increasing the service rate of the shared-ride fleet. To test this hypothesis, the authors employ a dynamic agent-based simulation of travelers, AVs, and an AV fleet operator. The underlying AV fleet control problem is highly-dynamic and stochastic, as traveler requests are unknown to the fleet operator a priori. To solve the dynamic and stochastic optimization problem, the AV fleet operator repeatedly re-solves an online AV-traveler assignment problem based on the current state the system. The simulation results illustrate that under various experimental settings, shared-ride service significantly outperforms ridesourcing service in terms of handling demand surges. At low demand levels, traveler wait times are similar for shared-ride and ridesourcing services. However, as demand increases, average traveler wait times increase more rapidly under ridesourcing service. The results suggest shared-ride service allows fleet operators to better handle demand surges.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP020 Standing Committee on Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies.

Report/Paper Numbers:

18-06667

Language:

English

Authors:

Hyland, Michael F
Mahmassani, Hani S

ORCID 0000-0002-8443-8928

Pagination:

16p

Publication Date:

2018

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; References; Tables

Subject Areas:

Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Vehicles and Equipment

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-06667

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Jan 8 2018 11:43AM